Someone asked a while back if my Human cities were all unicorns and rainbows (or similar) Sadly, to maybe ruin your image, the most evil area in the entire realm I created is run by Humans. To me (and the interwebz proves me right daily) Humans are THE most prone to Evil of ALL the races. They are more manipulative and judgmental than any other race (maybe the Lolthian Drow are close) and commit more dark, selfish acts against each other and all others, than any other race (or species, if you prefer)
So to summarize he worlds I build, MOST Orcs, Goblins, Gnolls and the like (so called "Evil" races/species) are indeed Evil. There are some regions where this does not hold true and the communities and such there are quite different (Zog the butcher is an Orc who haggles good deals to folks of all races, while Glob is an Orc as well, but from the farther reach of the continent and he and his people prefer to Butcher anyone NOT an Orc) MOST of these you encounter will be Evil and should be treated with caution, but you will come across those who are civilized and rational as well. So far as Humans go, you can NEVER assume what their alignment is, due to their inherent duplicity and radically different beliefs, even within the same society, At least in my worlds the society of the "other" races is more indicative of the residents behavior. All told, my biggest, most Evil denizens will tend to be Human,
The changes posted thus far are not what I had been presented in other discussions, where the inherent Evil of different sects had been erased. Adding the truth that there are regions and areas where the "norm" (evil Orcs or Drow) doesn't apply, shouldn't be a big issue. My opposition is/was the removal of lore that stated creatures from X region are generally of Evil alignment.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
The changes posted thus far are not what I had been presented in other discussions, where the inherent Evil of different sects had been erased. Adding the truth that there are regions and areas where the "norm" (evil Orcs or Drow) doesn't apply, shouldn't be a big issue. My opposition is/was the removal of lore that stated creatures from X region are generally of Evil alignment.
This has been the problem with this thread from the very start. The lore has neither been changed or removed. Someone somewhere said it, and rather than read the errata for themselves, people jump on the internet with their torches and pitchforks looking to fight.
Removing the Alignment block from the Racial Traits section doesn't change the lore for the Forgotten Realms at all.
The alignment system existing doesn't make Evil a tangible thing. Just because characters get placed on a Good - Evil axis doesn't mean there's some absolute cosmic force Evil present in the setting as well. Stepping up from mortals' alignments to gods' alignments doesn't change that either. An evil god isn't the same as a cosmic Evil.
From the web site you referenced: "Below is clarification on how the Admins and Developers of TDN perceive alignment for Forgotten Realms." This is not an official position from WotC on FR.
Please show me where either Eberron or Wildemount state that Evil is not a real thing in those places?
It remains my position that in all of those campaign worlds the following can be argued to be true:
Evil and Good are real, tangible things, especially where the divine is concerned.
Gods that can create populations of sentient creatures exist.
Some of those gods are Evil.
Some of those Evil gods can, and do, create entire populations of sentient creatures who have been hardwired by that god to be actual Evil.
Some of those hard-coded evil sentient creatures are able to overcome or escape from that evil.
Unless a campaign setting states that Evil is not a real thing in the campaign (ie. Morality is subjective) then it can be assumed that Real Evil (TM) exists.
No one in this thread has (afaik to this point) suggested that ALL Evil sentient fantasy creatures should be killed on sight.
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"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
Why should the core books describe things as they work in the Forgotten Realms, when that's the only realm of the ever-increasing number of D&D settings where things work that way?
Cause alignment is a mechanic of the system? I know it is rude to answer a question with another question and I hope it didn't come off as rude.
Outside of one or two magic items, alignment has practically no mechanical influence on gameplay. There are no class features or spells which are dependent on the player or target having a particular alignment.
To call the Alignment chart a mechanic of the system is generous, imo. Removing it from a stat block will have a negligible effect on gameplay. The DM will just decide what they want that instance of the creature to be based on how it fits into their narrative. What the exact alignment is probably wont ever be revealed to the player.
From pg 3 of the new errata for the PHB:
"Alignment is an essential part of the nature of celestials and fiends. Both types of creatures are associated with metaphysical planes of existence—specifically the Outer Planes—that embody certain alignments. For example, most devils hail from the Nine Hells, a plane of lawful evil. A devil does not choose to be lawful evil or tend toward lawful evil, but rather it is lawful evil in its essence. If it somehow ceases to be lawful evil, it changes into something new—a transformation worthy of legend."
That these devils are literal Evil, and can't be Devils without being evil, means that the alignments are more than a suggestion, or that removing them has no mechanical effect. There are a creatures whose very nature is tangible evil.
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"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
My issue with the interwebs answer is it is either promoting copy right infringement(breaking the law) or using homebrew
It isn't. Pretty much if it's not creating illegal digital copies or another outright copy/paste type deal, it doesn't infringe on copyright protection. Plenty of perfectly legitimate wikis out there.
So there are legitmate wikis are that one to one copies of the lore with no rewording, no homebrew, and no parapharsing and exactly the content that was released without any homebrew modifications?
From the web site you referenced: "Below is clarification on how the Admins and Developers of TDN perceive alignment for Forgotten Realms." This is not an official position from WotC on FR.
Please show me where either Eberron or Wildemount state that Evil is not a real thing in those places?
It remains my position that in all of those campaign worlds the following can be argued to be true:
Evil and Good are real, tangible things, especially where the divine is concerned.
Gods that can create populations of sentient creatures exist.
Some of those gods are Evil.
Some of those Evil gods can, and do, create entire populations of sentient creatures who have been hardwired by that god to be actual Evil.
Some of those hard-coded evil sentient creatures are able to overcome or escape from that evil.
Unless a campaign setting states that Evil is not a real thing in the campaign (ie. Morality is subjective) then it can be assumed that Real Evil (TM) exists.
No one in this thread has (afaik to this point) suggested that ALL Evil sentient fantasy creatures should be killed on sight.
1.) Then free will is a myth and you may as well kick all your players out of your game and write a novel. Objective morality is the death of culture, freedom, and expression. 2.) Sentient creatures cannot have arisen any other way? 3.) Good* for them. 4.) Then those beings are fundamentally harmful and must be expunged from creation. To let them live is not an act of mercy or kindness, it is an act of rankest stupidity. 5.) Bullshit. The entire point of A.C.E.F. is it takes literal divine intervention to make a Bad creature Good. After all, by your own Point 4, there is no good in such a creature. They're soulless, will-less shells built as nothing more than the mindless puppets of their evil god. 6.) I have so many stories for you. But you wouldn't listen to any of them. So oh well. 7.) If anyone follows your logic train to this point, then there is no reason not to murder any member of any A.C.E.F. species on sight. Like I said to your Point 4, there's no good reason to let evil persist. All such creatures are blights upon society and expunging them is the only sensible course of action. Your own assumptions make it plain that there's no reasonable, rational, or logical purpose in allowing an evil god's soulless, will-less, mindless shell to continue Perpetrating Evil.
This logic train turns the entire game into a children's TV show. "You're human, so you're Good. You help the world by doing Good, and by stopping Evil. Those dark-skinned people outside the walls are all Evil. If you stop them, you've done Good!" It's shallow, asinine, and deeply, deeply unsatisfying. It's a young child's first clumsy attempt at defining morality and it's not anything worth playing. Or at least, it isn't for me, and I feel like my view is hardly unique. If it was I would've been banned long since.
Why should the core books describe things as they work in the Forgotten Realms, when that's the only realm of the ever-increasing number of D&D settings where things work that way?
Cause alignment is a mechanic of the system? I know it is rude to answer a question with another question and I hope it didn't come off as rude.
Outside of one or two magic items, alignment has practically no mechanical influence on gameplay. There are no class features or spells which are dependent on the player or target having a particular alignment.
To call the Alignment chart a mechanic of the system is generous, imo. Removing it from a stat block will have a negligible effect on gameplay. The DM will just decide what they want that instance of the creature to be based on how it fits into their narrative. What the exact alignment is probably wont ever be revealed to the player.
From pg 3 of the new errata for the PHB:
"Alignment is an essential part of the nature of celestials and fiends. Both types of creatures are associated with metaphysical planes of existence—specifically the Outer Planes—that embody certain alignments. For example, most devils hail from the Nine Hells, a plane of lawful evil. A devil does not choose to be lawful evil or tend toward lawful evil, but rather it is lawful evil in its essence. If it somehow ceases to be lawful evil, it changes into something new—a transformation worthy of legend."
That these devils are literal Evil, and can't be Devils without being evil, means that the alignments are more than a suggestion, or that removing them has no mechanical effect. There are a creatures whose very nature is tangible evil.
Name a player race or class where alignment has a mechanical effect.
The changes posted thus far are not what I had been presented in other discussions, where the inherent Evil of different sects had been erased. Adding the truth that there are regions and areas where the "norm" (evil Orcs or Drow) doesn't apply, shouldn't be a big issue. My opposition is/was the removal of lore that stated creatures from X region are generally of Evil alignment.
This has been the problem with this thread from the very start. The lore has neither been changed or removed. Someone somewhere said it, and rather than read the errata for themselves, people jump on the internet with their torches and pitchforks looking to fight.
Removing the Alignment block from the Racial Traits section doesn't change the lore for the Forgotten Realms at all.
" "Yuan-ti are emotionless, yet feel completely superior to humanoids, in the same way that a human can feel superior to chickens or rabbits — in a matter-of-fact, completely objective way that doesn’t brook any second-guessing. To a yuan-ti, there are only three categories of creature: threat, yuan-ti, or meat. Threats are powerful creatures such as demons, dragons, and genies. Yuan-ti are any of their own kind, regardless of caste; although a rival yuan-ti might be dangerous, and a weak or dead one might be potential food, it is first and foremost one of the true people and deserving of some respect. Meat includes any creature that is neither a threat nor a yuan-ti, possibly useful for a base purpose but not worthy of other consideration.Most yuan-ti consider it beneath themselves to speak to meat. Abominations and malisons rarely communicate directly with slaves except in emergencies (such as for giving battle orders); at other times, slaves are expected to constantly be aware of the master’s mood, anticipate the master’s needs, and recognize subtle gestures of hands, head, and tail that indicate commands****y purebloods — which walk among humanoids and therefore have to learn how to speak to them civilly — practice interacting with meat-creatures. Much of their training involves suppressing their innate annoyance at having to speak to lesser beings as though they were equals, or being obliged to kowtow to a humanoid ruler as if the pureblood were merely an advisor. Pureblood spies feel a sort of aloof contempt toward meat-creatures, but they can affect a pleasant tone, and speak to such creatures with a silver tongue that disguises their true feelings.Under normal circumstances, yuan-ti are always calmly deferential to those of higher rank. They tend to be curt and formal with those of lower rank, for the differences between them aren’t a source of anger or disgust (emotions that the yuan-ti don’t feel anyway), merely a fact of the natural order, and their culture long ago realized that treating the lower castes with a measure of detached respect prevents rebellion and advances the cause of the entire race.The ritual that produced the first yuan-ti required the human subjects to butcher and eat their human slaves and prisoners. This act of cannibalism had several ramifications. It broke a long-standing taboo among civilized humanoids and set the yuan-ti apart from other civilizations as creatures not beholden to moral values. It corrupted their flesh, making the yuan-ti receptive to dark magic. It emulated the dispassionate viewpoint of the reptilian mind, a trait the yuan-ti admired. Today, cannibalism is practiced by the most fervent of yuan-ti cultists, including those who aspire to transform into yuan-ti themselves. In yuan-ti cities, the activity persists in the form of human sacrifice — not strictly cannibalism anymore, but still serving as a repudiation of what it is to be human and a glorification of what it is to be yuan-ti. Yuan-ti don’t have a taboo against eating their own kind; a starving yuan-ti would kill and eat a lesser without a second thought, and a group of them would choose the weakest among them to be killed and eaten. Under normal circumstances, however, they bury or cremate their dead rather than eating them, but a great hero or someone of status might be ritually consumed as a form of tribute.""
All of that was removed from the lore of 5e, old books and online are not valid sources for 5e content as they are not listed here.
From the web site you referenced: "Below is clarification on how the Admins and Developers of TDN perceive alignment for Forgotten Realms." This is not an official position from WotC on FR.
Please show me where either Eberron or Wildemount state that Evil is not a real thing in those places?
It remains my position that in all of those campaign worlds the following can be argued to be true:
Evil and Good are real, tangible things, especially where the divine is concerned.
Gods that can create populations of sentient creatures exist.
Some of those gods are Evil.
Some of those Evil gods can, and do, create entire populations of sentient creatures who have been hardwired by that god to be actual Evil.
Some of those hard-coded evil sentient creatures are able to overcome or escape from that evil.
Unless a campaign setting states that Evil is not a real thing in the campaign (ie. Morality is subjective) then it can be assumed that Real Evil (TM) exists.
No one in this thread has (afaik to this point) suggested that ALL Evil sentient fantasy creatures should be killed on sight.
1.) Then free will is a myth and you may as well kick all your players out of your game and write a novel. Objective morality is the death of culture, freedom, and expression. 2.) Sentient creatures cannot have arisen any other way? 3.) Good* for them. 4.) Then those beings are fundamentally harmful and must be expunged from creation. To let them live is not an act of mercy or kindness, it is an act of rankest stupidity. 5.) Bullshit. The entire point of A.C.E.F. is it takes literal divine intervention to make a Bad creature Good. After all, by your own Point 4, there is no good in such a creature. They're soulless, will-less shells built as nothing more than the mindless puppets of their evil god. 6.) I have so many stories for you. But you wouldn't listen to any of them. So oh well. 7.) If anyone follows your logic train to this point, then there is no reason not to murder any member of any A.C.E.F. species on sight. Like I said to your Point 4, there's no good reason to let evil persist. All such creatures are blights upon society and expunging them is the only sensible course of action. Your own assumptions make it plain that there's no reasonable, rational, or logical purpose in allowing an evil god's soulless, will-less, mindless shell to continue Perpetrating Evil.
This logic train turns the entire game into a children's TV show. "You're human, so you're Good. You help the world by doing Good, and by stopping Evil. Those dark-skinned people outside the walls are all Evil. If you stop them, you've done Good!" It's shallow, asinine, and deeply, deeply unsatisfying. It's a young child's first clumsy attempt at defining morality and it's not anything worth playing. Or at least, it isn't for me, and I feel like my view is hardly unique. If it was I would've been banned long since.
So you are playing with words so I'm just gonna say it you think pre-errata dnd was racist
Please show me where either Eberron or Wildemount state that Evil is not a real thing in those places?
You want me to prove a negative? That's not really a thing, you know. Neither sourcebook states it doesn't have King Kong either, but that doesn't prove there's a humongous gorilla in both those settings.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
From the web site you referenced: "Below is clarification on how the Admins and Developers of TDN perceive alignment for Forgotten Realms." This is not an official position from WotC on FR.
Please show me where either Eberron or Wildemount state that Evil is not a real thing in those places?
It remains my position that in all of those campaign worlds the following can be argued to be true:
Evil and Good are real, tangible things, especially where the divine is concerned.
Gods that can create populations of sentient creatures exist.
Some of those gods are Evil.
Some of those Evil gods can, and do, create entire populations of sentient creatures who have been hardwired by that god to be actual Evil.
Some of those hard-coded evil sentient creatures are able to overcome or escape from that evil.
Unless a campaign setting states that Evil is not a real thing in the campaign (ie. Morality is subjective) then it can be assumed that Real Evil (TM) exists.
No one in this thread has (afaik to this point) suggested that ALL Evil sentient fantasy creatures should be killed on sight.
1.) Then free will is a myth and you may as well kick all your players out of your game and write a novel. Objective morality is the death of culture, freedom, and expression. 2.) Sentient creatures cannot have arisen any other way? 3.) Good* for them. 4.) Then those beings are fundamentally harmful and must be expunged from creation. To let them live is not an act of mercy or kindness, it is an act of rankest stupidity. 5.) Bullshit. The entire point of A.C.E.F. is it takes literal divine intervention to make a Bad creature Good. After all, by your own Point 4, there is no good in such a creature. They're soulless, will-less shells built as nothing more than the mindless puppets of their evil god. 6.) I have so many stories for you. But you wouldn't listen to any of them. So oh well. 7.) If anyone follows your logic train to this point, then there is no reason not to murder any member of any A.C.E.F. species on sight. Like I said to your Point 4, there's no good reason to let evil persist. All such creatures are blights upon society and expunging them is the only sensible course of action. Your own assumptions make it plain that there's no reasonable, rational, or logical purpose in allowing an evil god's soulless, will-less, mindless shell to continue Perpetrating Evil.
This logic train turns the entire game into a children's TV show. "You're human, so you're Good. You help the world by doing Good, and by stopping Evil. Those dark-skinned people outside the walls are all Evil. If you stop them, you've done Good!" It's shallow, asinine, and deeply, deeply unsatisfying. It's a young child's first clumsy attempt at defining morality and it's not anything worth playing. Or at least, it isn't for me, and I feel like my view is hardly unique. If it was I would've been banned long since.
The existing lore states that the good gods can, and do, create sentient creatures with free will. I never suggested otherwise. Your point is not valid.
No one said they couldn't, only that gods exist that can, and do, create sentient creatures, and that some of those gods are evil.
Yup.
Wow, it seems like the only one here who feels like evil creatures must be "expunged" is you. Honestly a little frightening. A completely subjective assertion on your part, not cannon.
As I've pointed out repeatedly, the existing and re-errata rules have for a long time allowed for some of these evil creatures to overcome the evil and be not-evil. Your subjective feelings about morality don't change the fact that it is cannon for evil sentient creatures to exist as a majority, and for some of them to not be evil.
Not sure what point you are trying to make. If you are referring to how some DMs interpret the rules, or homebrew campaign worlds, then your attempt at a rebuttal does not change the facts about the published campaign worlds. You haven't actually rebutted my point here.
Again, you are wrong, seem to be projecting, and seem to have trouble considering possibilities. There can be a myriad reasons for a PC/NPC from a non-evil race to choose not to kill a member of an Evil race, especially since the playable races are said to have free will granted by their creator gods. What you suggest sounds more like what would happen if a Good god created an entire sentient species to be Good, and did not give them free will, as a true opposite to an Evil god creating an evil sentient species that is Evil with no free-will.
I'm really not sure how to take your posts anymore. Either you are just trolling me, or you really believe these things. If the latter, then it seems more like you have a very specific set of beliefs about how these things must work, which is not supported by the sources, and you assume that everyone else must believe the same thing, and if they don't agree with you, you can't comprehend why.
You also seem to try to set up a lot of arguments for or against things no one has said. The "strawman" arguments I refereed to earlier.
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"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
So you are playing with words so I'm just gonna say it you think pre-errata dnd was racist
Wizards of the Coast thinks Old D&D is racist. That's why they've spent the last year and a half changing course and patching up old books.
Again - I was here the first time this shit all went down. I was here when Wizards released their Diversity and Dragons manifesto, when Tasha's Cauldron was in development and had people in a frothing tizzy, and when errata to older books - including Volo's Guide to DM Headaches - lit the whole-ass forum on fire.
Nun'a ya are saying any-damn-thing new. You're just reprising arguments that have been had fifty times already, and yes - I include the "you just think we're all racist, don't you?!" argument in that. Brooklyn Red Leg, in particular, was quite fond of that argument and of snapping at people for "calling him racist" when he argued that orcs were orcs, not people, and orcs being evil had nothing to do with real-world stereotypes. He leaned hard on that bad-faith argument.
What you're doing is searching for a crowbar you can use to beat me with because you don't want to admit that the benefits of changing the base books to a more neutral overall stance outweighs the drawbacks of upsetting Old Guard players that get upset with every new book release as it is. Here. let me give you that crowbar, free of charge.
No, I don't think people who like the old lore are necessarily racist. I do think the old lore is bad and in dire need of a rewrite. The biggest reason I'm a huge fan of the idea of a big, beautiful, super well done Forgotten Realms setting sourcebook for 5e? Because then that book can be the Forgotten Realms. If it ain't in that book, IT DOESN'T BLOODY COUNT! Anything not in that sourcebook gets to be homebrew, even if it's homebrew somebody pulled from older editions. All the older-edition sourcebooks are dead. Let them be. make a new Forgotten Realms sourcebook. Start over. STOP demanding that every new player has to buy thousands and thousands of dollars of dead, out-of-print, difficult-to-find sourcebooks and study every last one of them exhaustively before they're allowed to play D&D. Make a new Forgotten Realms sourcebook, put what's critical to the Forgotten Realms in that sourcebook, and kill everything else.
There's your crowbar, Orthusaka. And October, and Falwith, and everyone else. There's the stick you can beat me with - I believe it's bad for the game to be dependent on old, dead, inaccessible lore that's only ever used by gatekeeping grognards to keep new players out. Make a new book, with a new version of that lore that's accessible to everyone, and to Hell with everything else.
Please show me where either Eberron or Wildemount state that Evil is not a real thing in those places?
You want me to prove a negative? That's not really a thing, you know. Neither sourcebook states it doesn't have King Kong either, but that doesn't prove there's a humongous gorilla in both those settings.
I'm not asking you to prove a negative, I'm asking for a citation in any of those campaign source books that stipulates that Evil is not a real thing in the world, because in the absence of such a declaration from the author, it can be assume that real evil may be a real thing in that campaign world.
In other words, if Matt Mercer wanted it to be clear to everyone that real evil is not real in his world, he would have said so in the book. The lack of such texts suggests that it could be cannon that in Matt Mercer's world, real evil exists.
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"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
snapping at people for "calling him racist" when he argued that orcs were orcs, not people, and orcs being evil had nothing to do with real-world stereotypes. He leaned hard on that bad-faith argument.
It's not a bad faith argument. D&D Orcs are not an analog for real world people, but some people keep trying to make it so.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
The changes posted thus far are not what I had been presented in other discussions, where the inherent Evil of different sects had been erased. Adding the truth that there are regions and areas where the "norm" (evil Orcs or Drow) doesn't apply, shouldn't be a big issue. My opposition is/was the removal of lore that stated creatures from X region are generally of Evil alignment.
This has been the problem with this thread from the very start. The lore has neither been changed or removed. Someone somewhere said it, and rather than read the errata for themselves, people jump on the internet with their torches and pitchforks looking to fight.
Removing the Alignment block from the Racial Traits section doesn't change the lore for the Forgotten Realms at all.
" "Yuan-ti are emotionless, yet feel completely superior to humanoids, in the same way that a human can feel superior to chickens or rabbits — in a matter-of-fact, completely objective way that doesn’t brook any second-guessing. To a yuan-ti, there are only three categories of creature: threat, yuan-ti, or meat. Threats are powerful creatures such as demons, dragons, and genies. Yuan-ti are any of their own kind, regardless of caste; although a rival yuan-ti might be dangerous, and a weak or dead one might be potential food, it is first and foremost one of the true people and deserving of some respect. Meat includes any creature that is neither a threat nor a yuan-ti, possibly useful for a base purpose but not worthy of other consideration.Most yuan-ti consider it beneath themselves to speak to meat. Abominations and malisons rarely communicate directly with slaves except in emergencies (such as for giving battle orders); at other times, slaves are expected to constantly be aware of the master’s mood, anticipate the master’s needs, and recognize subtle gestures of hands, head, and tail that indicate commands****y purebloods — which walk among humanoids and therefore have to learn how to speak to them civilly — practice interacting with meat-creatures. Much of their training involves suppressing their innate annoyance at having to speak to lesser beings as though they were equals, or being obliged to kowtow to a humanoid ruler as if the pureblood were merely an advisor. Pureblood spies feel a sort of aloof contempt toward meat-creatures, but they can affect a pleasant tone, and speak to such creatures with a silver tongue that disguises their true feelings.Under normal circumstances, yuan-ti are always calmly deferential to those of higher rank. They tend to be curt and formal with those of lower rank, for the differences between them aren’t a source of anger or disgust (emotions that the yuan-ti don’t feel anyway), merely a fact of the natural order, and their culture long ago realized that treating the lower castes with a measure of detached respect prevents rebellion and advances the cause of the entire race.The ritual that produced the first yuan-ti required the human subjects to butcher and eat their human slaves and prisoners. This act of cannibalism had several ramifications. It broke a long-standing taboo among civilized humanoids and set the yuan-ti apart from other civilizations as creatures not beholden to moral values. It corrupted their flesh, making the yuan-ti receptive to dark magic. It emulated the dispassionate viewpoint of the reptilian mind, a trait the yuan-ti admired. Today, cannibalism is practiced by the most fervent of yuan-ti cultists, including those who aspire to transform into yuan-ti themselves. In yuan-ti cities, the activity persists in the form of human sacrifice — not strictly cannibalism anymore, but still serving as a repudiation of what it is to be human and a glorification of what it is to be yuan-ti. Yuan-ti don’t have a taboo against eating their own kind; a starving yuan-ti would kill and eat a lesser without a second thought, and a group of them would choose the weakest among them to be killed and eaten. Under normal circumstances, however, they bury or cremate their dead rather than eating them, but a great hero or someone of status might be ritually consumed as a form of tribute.""
All of that was removed from the lore of 5e, old books and online are not valid sources for 5e content as they are not listed here.
All of this is still part of the lore. Did you read any of the rest of the Yuan-ti section of the book?
"MY copy of Volo's Guide to Monsters says your species is evil ands that you have a -2 to Intelligence, so I'm gonna stab you in your sleep, steal all your stuff, and then convince all your dumb gullible tribal relatives that you had it coming" would be deeply, deeply confusing to someone playing an orc from the most modern printing of Volo's ne?
That is not an issue of different versions, that is an issue of a dick player being a murder hobo
Yurei, this might surprise you but I would be okay with that. I'm honestly sick of them trying to adjust things to be setting agnostic. If it is a mechanic it should be agnostic but mm, and the like should be done with a setting in mind so that we can get the depth of the settings without having everything be setting agnostic
I am sorry if I come off as like one of the ones who started the dumpster fire. My issue is 5e was initialized as FR as the default which had a lot of baggage packed in with the flavor text. Had 5e started off as how it is now but the settings books were full fledged out and big think books filled to the brim of setting specific lore regardless if it was updated. I would have been fine. I just dont like cutting out what we have without having it officially somewhere to make up for it.
Please show me where either Eberron or Wildemount state that Evil is not a real thing in those places?
You want me to prove a negative? That's not really a thing, you know. Neither sourcebook states it doesn't have King Kong either, but that doesn't prove there's a humongous gorilla in both those settings.
I'm not asking you to prove a negative, I'm asking for a citation in any of those campaign source books that stipulates that Evil is not a real thing in the world, because in the absence of such a declaration from the author, it can be assume that real evil may be a real thing in that campaign world.
In other words, if Matt Mercer wanted it to be clear to everyone that real evil is not real in his world, he would have said so in the book. The lack of such texts suggests that it could be cannon that in Matt Mercer's world, real evil exists.
And King Kong could conceivably be ruling some Exandrian version of Skull Island (intellectual property issues notwithstanding). What's your point? If the lore never stipulated Evil and Good as canonically present cosmic forces, that nonexisting stipulation can't exactly be removed from the lore, after all.
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Someone asked a while back if my Human cities were all unicorns and rainbows (or similar) Sadly, to maybe ruin your image, the most evil area in the entire realm I created is run by Humans. To me (and the interwebz proves me right daily) Humans are THE most prone to Evil of ALL the races. They are more manipulative and judgmental than any other race (maybe the Lolthian Drow are close) and commit more dark, selfish acts against each other and all others, than any other race (or species, if you prefer)
So to summarize he worlds I build, MOST Orcs, Goblins, Gnolls and the like (so called "Evil" races/species) are indeed Evil. There are some regions where this does not hold true and the communities and such there are quite different (Zog the butcher is an Orc who haggles good deals to folks of all races, while Glob is an Orc as well, but from the farther reach of the continent and he and his people prefer to Butcher anyone NOT an Orc) MOST of these you encounter will be Evil and should be treated with caution, but you will come across those who are civilized and rational as well. So far as Humans go, you can NEVER assume what their alignment is, due to their inherent duplicity and radically different beliefs, even within the same society, At least in my worlds the society of the "other" races is more indicative of the residents behavior. All told, my biggest, most Evil denizens will tend to be Human,
The changes posted thus far are not what I had been presented in other discussions, where the inherent Evil of different sects had been erased. Adding the truth that there are regions and areas where the "norm" (evil Orcs or Drow) doesn't apply, shouldn't be a big issue. My opposition is/was the removal of lore that stated creatures from X region are generally of Evil alignment.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
So... this thread has wandered a bit.
C. Foster Payne
"If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around."
This has been the problem with this thread from the very start. The lore has neither been changed or removed. Someone somewhere said it, and rather than read the errata for themselves, people jump on the internet with their torches and pitchforks looking to fight.
Removing the Alignment block from the Racial Traits section doesn't change the lore for the Forgotten Realms at all.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
From the web site you referenced: "Below is clarification on how the Admins and Developers of TDN perceive alignment for Forgotten Realms." This is not an official position from WotC on FR.
Please show me where either Eberron or Wildemount state that Evil is not a real thing in those places?
It remains my position that in all of those campaign worlds the following can be argued to be true:
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
From pg 3 of the new errata for the PHB:
"Alignment is an essential part of the nature of celestials and fiends. Both types of creatures are associated with metaphysical planes of existence—specifically the Outer Planes—that embody certain alignments. For example, most devils hail from the Nine Hells, a plane of lawful evil. A devil does not choose to be lawful evil or tend toward lawful evil, but rather it is lawful evil in its essence. If it somehow ceases to be lawful evil, it changes into something new—a transformation worthy of legend."
That these devils are literal Evil, and can't be Devils without being evil, means that the alignments are more than a suggestion, or that removing them has no mechanical effect. There are a creatures whose very nature is tangible evil.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
So there are legitmate wikis are that one to one copies of the lore with no rewording, no homebrew, and no parapharsing and exactly the content that was released without any homebrew modifications?
PR style responses are considered hostile intent.
Links to these, "screengrabs of the old Volo's lore chunks", please.
1.) Then free will is a myth and you may as well kick all your players out of your game and write a novel. Objective morality is the death of culture, freedom, and expression.
2.) Sentient creatures cannot have arisen any other way?
3.) Good* for them.
4.) Then those beings are fundamentally harmful and must be expunged from creation. To let them live is not an act of mercy or kindness, it is an act of rankest stupidity.
5.) Bullshit. The entire point of A.C.E.F. is it takes literal divine intervention to make a Bad creature Good. After all, by your own Point 4, there is no good in such a creature. They're soulless, will-less shells built as nothing more than the mindless puppets of their evil god.
6.) I have so many stories for you. But you wouldn't listen to any of them. So oh well.
7.) If anyone follows your logic train to this point, then there is no reason not to murder any member of any A.C.E.F. species on sight. Like I said to your Point 4, there's no good reason to let evil persist. All such creatures are blights upon society and expunging them is the only sensible course of action. Your own assumptions make it plain that there's no reasonable, rational, or logical purpose in allowing an evil god's soulless, will-less, mindless shell to continue Perpetrating Evil.
This logic train turns the entire game into a children's TV show. "You're human, so you're Good. You help the world by doing Good, and by stopping Evil. Those dark-skinned people outside the walls are all Evil. If you stop them, you've done Good!" It's shallow, asinine, and deeply, deeply unsatisfying. It's a young child's first clumsy attempt at defining morality and it's not anything worth playing. Or at least, it isn't for me, and I feel like my view is hardly unique. If it was I would've been banned long since.
Please do not contact or message me.
Name a player race or class where alignment has a mechanical effect.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
" "Yuan-ti are emotionless, yet feel completely superior to humanoids, in the same way that a human can feel superior to chickens or rabbits — in a matter-of-fact, completely objective way that doesn’t brook any second-guessing. To a yuan-ti, there are only three categories of creature: threat, yuan-ti, or meat. Threats are powerful creatures such as demons, dragons, and genies. Yuan-ti are any of their own kind, regardless of caste; although a rival yuan-ti might be dangerous, and a weak or dead one might be potential food, it is first and foremost one of the true people and deserving of some respect. Meat includes any creature that is neither a threat nor a yuan-ti, possibly useful for a base purpose but not worthy of other consideration.Most yuan-ti consider it beneath themselves to speak to meat. Abominations and malisons rarely communicate directly with slaves except in emergencies (such as for giving battle orders); at other times, slaves are expected to constantly be aware of the master’s mood, anticipate the master’s needs, and recognize subtle gestures of hands, head, and tail that indicate commands****y purebloods — which walk among humanoids and therefore have to learn how to speak to them civilly — practice interacting with meat-creatures. Much of their training involves suppressing their innate annoyance at having to speak to lesser beings as though they were equals, or being obliged to kowtow to a humanoid ruler as if the pureblood were merely an advisor. Pureblood spies feel a sort of aloof contempt toward meat-creatures, but they can affect a pleasant tone, and speak to such creatures with a silver tongue that disguises their true feelings.Under normal circumstances, yuan-ti are always calmly deferential to those of higher rank. They tend to be curt and formal with those of lower rank, for the differences between them aren’t a source of anger or disgust (emotions that the yuan-ti don’t feel anyway), merely a fact of the natural order, and their culture long ago realized that treating the lower castes with a measure of detached respect prevents rebellion and advances the cause of the entire race.The ritual that produced the first yuan-ti required the human subjects to butcher and eat their human slaves and prisoners. This act of cannibalism had several ramifications. It broke a long-standing taboo among civilized humanoids and set the yuan-ti apart from other civilizations as creatures not beholden to moral values. It corrupted their flesh, making the yuan-ti receptive to dark magic. It emulated the dispassionate viewpoint of the reptilian mind, a trait the yuan-ti admired. Today, cannibalism is practiced by the most fervent of yuan-ti cultists, including those who aspire to transform into yuan-ti themselves. In yuan-ti cities, the activity persists in the form of human sacrifice — not strictly cannibalism anymore, but still serving as a repudiation of what it is to be human and a glorification of what it is to be yuan-ti. Yuan-ti don’t have a taboo against eating their own kind; a starving yuan-ti would kill and eat a lesser without a second thought, and a group of them would choose the weakest among them to be killed and eaten. Under normal circumstances, however, they bury or cremate their dead rather than eating them, but a great hero or someone of status might be ritually consumed as a form of tribute.""
All of that was removed from the lore of 5e, old books and online are not valid sources for 5e content as they are not listed here.
PR style responses are considered hostile intent.
So you are playing with words so I'm just gonna say it you think pre-errata dnd was racist
PR style responses are considered hostile intent.
You want me to prove a negative? That's not really a thing, you know. Neither sourcebook states it doesn't have King Kong either, but that doesn't prove there's a humongous gorilla in both those settings.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I'm really not sure how to take your posts anymore. Either you are just trolling me, or you really believe these things. If the latter, then it seems more like you have a very specific set of beliefs about how these things must work, which is not supported by the sources, and you assume that everyone else must believe the same thing, and if they don't agree with you, you can't comprehend why.
You also seem to try to set up a lot of arguments for or against things no one has said. The "strawman" arguments I refereed to earlier.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
Wizards of the Coast thinks Old D&D is racist. That's why they've spent the last year and a half changing course and patching up old books.
Again - I was here the first time this shit all went down. I was here when Wizards released their Diversity and Dragons manifesto, when Tasha's Cauldron was in development and had people in a frothing tizzy, and when errata to older books - including Volo's Guide to DM Headaches - lit the whole-ass forum on fire.
Nun'a ya are saying any-damn-thing new. You're just reprising arguments that have been had fifty times already, and yes - I include the "you just think we're all racist, don't you?!" argument in that. Brooklyn Red Leg, in particular, was quite fond of that argument and of snapping at people for "calling him racist" when he argued that orcs were orcs, not people, and orcs being evil had nothing to do with real-world stereotypes. He leaned hard on that bad-faith argument.
What you're doing is searching for a crowbar you can use to beat me with because you don't want to admit that the benefits of changing the base books to a more neutral overall stance outweighs the drawbacks of upsetting Old Guard players that get upset with every new book release as it is. Here. let me give you that crowbar, free of charge.
No, I don't think people who like the old lore are necessarily racist. I do think the old lore is bad and in dire need of a rewrite. The biggest reason I'm a huge fan of the idea of a big, beautiful, super well done Forgotten Realms setting sourcebook for 5e? Because then that book can be the Forgotten Realms. If it ain't in that book, IT DOESN'T BLOODY COUNT! Anything not in that sourcebook gets to be homebrew, even if it's homebrew somebody pulled from older editions. All the older-edition sourcebooks are dead. Let them be. make a new Forgotten Realms sourcebook. Start over. STOP demanding that every new player has to buy thousands and thousands of dollars of dead, out-of-print, difficult-to-find sourcebooks and study every last one of them exhaustively before they're allowed to play D&D. Make a new Forgotten Realms sourcebook, put what's critical to the Forgotten Realms in that sourcebook, and kill everything else.
There's your crowbar, Orthusaka. And October, and Falwith, and everyone else. There's the stick you can beat me with - I believe it's bad for the game to be dependent on old, dead, inaccessible lore that's only ever used by gatekeeping grognards to keep new players out. Make a new book, with a new version of that lore that's accessible to everyone, and to Hell with everything else.
Not in that new Forgotten Realms book?
Not 'real' lore.
Please do not contact or message me.
I'm not asking you to prove a negative, I'm asking for a citation in any of those campaign source books that stipulates that Evil is not a real thing in the world, because in the absence of such a declaration from the author, it can be assume that real evil may be a real thing in that campaign world.
In other words, if Matt Mercer wanted it to be clear to everyone that real evil is not real in his world, he would have said so in the book. The lack of such texts suggests that it could be cannon that in Matt Mercer's world, real evil exists.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
It's not a bad faith argument. D&D Orcs are not an analog for real world people, but some people keep trying to make it so.
Here's a good article to read: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/checkpoints/202004/no-orcs-arent-racist
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
All of this is still part of the lore. Did you read any of the rest of the Yuan-ti section of the book?
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
That is not an issue of different versions, that is an issue of a dick player being a murder hobo
Er ek geng, þat er í þeim skóm er ek valda.
UwU
Yurei, this might surprise you but I would be okay with that. I'm honestly sick of them trying to adjust things to be setting agnostic. If it is a mechanic it should be agnostic but mm, and the like should be done with a setting in mind so that we can get the depth of the settings without having everything be setting agnostic
I am sorry if I come off as like one of the ones who started the dumpster fire. My issue is 5e was initialized as FR as the default which had a lot of baggage packed in with the flavor text. Had 5e started off as how it is now but the settings books were full fledged out and big think books filled to the brim of setting specific lore regardless if it was updated. I would have been fine. I just dont like cutting out what we have without having it officially somewhere to make up for it.
PR style responses are considered hostile intent.
And King Kong could conceivably be ruling some Exandrian version of Skull Island (intellectual property issues notwithstanding). What's your point? If the lore never stipulated Evil and Good as canonically present cosmic forces, that nonexisting stipulation can't exactly be removed from the lore, after all.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].