Why is Death Attack evil?

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User3
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Why is Death Attack evil?

Post by User3 »

My personal moral compass says to me: "

1. Killing quick is better than killing slow.

2. Killing in battle to save your/someone's life is better than pre-meditated murder.

3. Killing animals/unintelligent monsters/Undead/demons/robots/Nazi's is perfectly OK as long as they are dangerous to you and yours and you don't get off on it too much or toy with them.

4. Torture is bad. Always.

That being said, why is Death Attack only a class feature of evil classes like Assasin and Black Flame Zealot? I mean, it certainly violates my rule 2, but since rule 3 allows for quite a bit, and it doesn't violate rule 4 or rule 1(since a Death attack is so much quicker than spending a few minutes hacking away at someone with a sword or ax), then what is the problem?

It can even be used to make a paralyzing attack, which means that it violates none of my rules when used like that. Zero. You can even save lives by paralyzing and tying up enemies rather than having to kill them.
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by Username17 »

I don't even really understand number 2, but that's beside the point.

D&D "good" and "evil" are all fvcked up. The double and even triple standards as to what forms of killing and hurting enemies are OK are perplexing and contradictory. I went into a considerable amount of detail as to what a flaming pile of feces the Book of Exalted Deeds was, and it basically hinged around this very problem.

http://frost.bbboy.net/thegamingden-vie ... damentally chopping someone's head off in their sleep should be equally or less evil to shooting them in the stomach. At the end of it they are just as dead, but in the second they suffered a lot more. Nevertheless, Robin Hood and G.I.Joe totally shoot people, and they are the heroes. But they don't normally cut people's heads off in their sleep. So people are free to apply magic logic to the fact that decapitation is gross (by the way, stomach wounds are also gross and stink), and label it evil.

Being chivalrous shouldn't have anything at all to do with Good and Evil because it doesn't actually prevent any suffering by its implementation. Nevertheless, people think of the White Knight as being good because he's chivalrous - which sort of implies that unchivalrous behavior should be evil even when that's obviously horse shit.

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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by RandomCasualty »

It's one of those stupid things like creating mindless undead being evil. Basically like all the other absolute morality crap in D&D it comes down to "because we, the rules designers, said so"

With D&D morality, they have yet to give a clear cut moral philosophy, it's generally a judgment call either way, only it's not, because it's supposed to be absolute.
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by User3 »

I can see the mindless undead argument. You are descecrating someone's corpse for personal gain. While some people don't see that as bad, I'day that it'd be no worse than wearing someone's mother's head as a hat, and I'd be offended by that.
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by Tae_Kwon_Dan »

That makes the act of creating the undead evil, not the poor mindless husk itself.

Zombies should be no more evil for eating people than lions are. They have no control over their existence nor their yearning desire for sweet succelent man flesh.
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by Username17 »

Here's a question... if morality is absolute, why do lions get off the hook? If the acts themselves are inherently good or evil, why would the act spontaneously become neutral simply because the moral agent is incompetent?

Or to put it another way, if you order me to slaughter some guy's mother and I do it without thinking about, that's evil, right? But if a lion's hunger orders it to slaughter some guy's mother and it does it without thinking about it, shouldn't that be evil in the exact same way?

If the act can be evil without the intervention of thought, then animals should come up as evil all the time. The whole argument that badgers don't care about good and therefore aren't evil is completely contrary to the entire concept of good and evil as absolutes. If anything that should mean that the Tiger is evil but doesn't know (or care), not that it is neutral.

---

Which of course means that the entire concept of objective morality is kind of stupid, since labelling tigers as good or evil doesn't really matter one way or the other to the tiger.

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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by Tae_Kwon_Dan »

Quite true, but I was just trying to round the edges of that square peg WotC wants me to fit in a round hole a little bit.

The whole morality issue is just nutty in D&D currently.
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by User3 »

Undead are evil because, unlike an animal, they are never going to be full and they don't need to eat. Killing to eat for your survival is OK, but killing to eat because you enjoy the flavor is evil.

Animals are neutral because they only kill when hungry, while a ghoul will never stop eating manflesh for any reason.

Mindless undead scan as evil simply because they are a walking, sometimes talking abomination. They are an evil act incarnated, and to allow them to exist is to allow evil to happen. Morality will often say that allowing evil to happen is just as bad as doing evil yourself (Which is why most states have good samaritan laws).
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by Desdan_Mervolam »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1090340974[/unixtime]]Here's a question... if morality is absolute, why do lions get off the hook? If the acts themselves are inherently good or evil, why would the act spontaneously become neutral simply because the moral agent is incompetent?


Game focus combined with the modern, relativistic outlooks of the game's designers. Make no mistake, to the mideval pesant, the wolves out there in the forest were evil. If gods of Death get branded as evil because of the way it was presented in legend, then animals should too. However, I really don't think that the designers really wanted to make a situation where PCs regularly spend time wiping out packs of wolves that aren't being controlled by a druid, werewolf, vampire, awakened wolf, or so forth.

Keith at [unixtime wrote:1090345399[/unixtime]]Undead are evil because, unlike an animal, they are never going to be full and they don't need to eat. Killing to eat for your survival is OK, but killing to eat because you enjoy the flavor is evil.


I'm not a man of means but I'm not about to starve or anything, so when I eat a steak, I eat it because I enjoy the flavor. Does that make me evil?

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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by User3 »

Choosing steak over chicken is not evil. Killing for enjoyment is evil. Most sport hunters would disagree, and most substanence hunters would agree.
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by MrWaeseL »

But what if you enjoy killing out of necessity? Are you evil then?
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by User3 »

Yes you are.
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1090340974[/unixtime]]Here's a question... if morality is absolute, why do lions get off the hook? If the acts themselves are inherently good or evil, why would the act spontaneously become neutral simply because the moral agent is incompetent?


Well, theoretically animal morality kind of works, assuming you just use the alignment definition and not the stupid Book of exalted deeds and Book of vile darkness crap.

Neutral creatures define themselves by their relationships, and that works pretty well for animals. Wolves are a member of a pack, dogs can be really loyal to their owners and so on. They don't go out of their way to do anything sadistic, so neutral fits them well.

If you go by the PHB definitions, the only truly "evil" act is betraying your friends, because that's what separates an evil from a neutral by the definition. If you simply just kill people who you don't know, then you're neutral.

Of course if you go by the stuff in the morality books, then you've got a bunch of self contradictory crap.
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by Username17 »

RC wrote:Neutral creatures define themselves by their relationships, and that works pretty well for animals. Wolves are a member of a pack, dogs can be really loyal to their owners and so on. They don't go out of their way to do anything sadistic, so neutral fits them well.


But dogs do sadistic crap all the time. Rather than simply killing rats they will often bat them around for a while, or bite them, let them go, chase them down, bite them again, and repeat until the rat is dead before actually eating it. So do cats, and for that matter sharks.

So if your criteria of animal neutrality includes not causing completely unnecessary pain for personal enjoyment, then the vast majority of carnivores don't qualify.

Tigers kill and hurt living creatures for fun. If people doing that is evil, tigers should detect as evil.

K wrote:Choosing steak over chicken is not evil. Killing for enjoyment is evil.


Then leopards and wolverines are evil, they quite often kill something, urinate all over it, and then just leave it somewhere without ever eating any part of it. Any moral criteria by which killing for fun is evil by necessity requires that wolverines are themselves evil.

Which means that it is not useful, or it's contradictory (and thus by definition not useful).

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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by User3 »

Animals aren't smart enough to be evil. They might be naturally sadistic, but that quality is is only evil in a creature smart enough to understand another cretaure's pain.

That's why S & M types ask permission and have safe words and all that crap. You wouldn't need all that if inflicting pain on someone else wasn't a terrible and evil thing for one sentient being to do to another.

Hell, even doctors have to get consent to perform any procedure on someone, even if they are trying to save that patient's life. Only in the case of the patient being unable to give consent and in need of life-saving treatment can they act without consent.
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by canamrock »

The PHB actually gives a brief yet succinct discussion of the matter I use to extrapolate D&D morality... alignment is about intelligent intention. Beings incapable of comprehending morality cannot reigster as being moral or immoral. Sadly, a good deal of other parts of the game conflict with this explanation. Too many designers cannot even agree on a standard for the 'moral' code, and you therefore end up with this crap-shoot.

No wonder so many people ditch the alignment concept nowadays.
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by Username17 »

But the whole safe words thing invalidates the concept of moral absolutism, as does the ignorance defense. If all you have to do to have your actions be not-imoral is to not understand the moral criteria, Clerics should be shot on sight by anyone who might ever have a moral failing later in life (which is, well, everyone).

Ignorance is not, and cannot be an out from moral absolutism. If moral absolutism is true then by definition it doesn't matter whether you understand the moral code when you violate it or not. In short, this:

K wrote:They might be naturally sadistic, but that quality is is only evil in a creature smart enough to understand another cretaure's pain.


Is only true in a relative moral system. In an absolute moral system, which D&D claims to have, then the action is moral or immoral regardless of the moral agent's understanding of the criteria.

In short, in absolute morality the people in the canibal village who eat people because it happens to be on the menu and they don't know any better are evil. In relative morality they may or may not be depending upon your system.

The tigers, like the people in the cannibalistic village, perform acts which are regarded by the system as evil - eating humans who don't want to be eaten. That means that they are evil unless the moral system is so full of shit that if I beat the shit out of it there wouldn't even be a system any more.

Hell, even doctors have to get consent to perform any procedure on someone, even if they are trying to save that patient's life. Only in the case of the patient being unable to give consent and in need of life-saving treatment can they act without consent.


The entire issue of implied consent is completely tangential to this discussion and will be henceforth ignored. The fact is that the D&D morality system is contradictory and therefore useless. Debating a point of "why" something is good or evil in D&D is like hammering a nail through your genitals. It hurts, and at the end of it you've basically accomplished nothing.

There is no logical reason why animating the dead should be evil, and no logical reason why animated dead should be evil. Making a flesh golem isn't evil, and flesh golems aren't evil. The entire moral labelling system makes less sense than the gender of nouns in Spanish.

Sometimes an object in Spanish will be masculine or feminine depending upon which word for it you happen to use. A pen, for example, could be "La Pluma" (feminine) or "El Boligrapho" (masculine). Both words mean pen, and getting your cock bent about it is a waste of my fvcking time.

Sometimes an action in D&D will be Good or Evil depending upon which word for it you happen to use. Shooting a bear with a tranq dart, for example, could be "using non-lethal weapons to resolve a conflict without loss of life" (Good) or "Using Poison against a neutral creature" (Evil). Both descriptions describe using a tranq dart, and are equally valid.

The descriptions of alignment are contradictory and make us cry. It should be removed from the game entirely if they can't come up with a philosophically sound moral system. It's not like you even have to go out of your way to make the system break down (The Kantian enquiring murder paradox, for example, is pretty esoteric - the National Forestry Service Bear Management Protocols are not).

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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by Lago_AM3P »

There is no logical reason why animating the dead should be evil, and no logical reason why animated dead should be evil. Making a flesh golem isn't evil, and flesh golems aren't evil.


One day, we will have a no-bullshit explanation for why creating undead (or any use of negative energy) automatically gets the evil label. I mean, creating and working with undead automatically gets you the evil label, even if you summon up the ghost of a kid to determine the location of the serial killer.

Something better than 'it uses negative energy, and negative energy is EEEVILLE!!!'.

Speaking of which... my job involves operating nuclear power plants, which is about as far as you can get towards slapping the evil label on something. The thing I work with literally has the potential to kill virtually every vertebrate on this planet within minutes and has nasty lingering effects that will screw over any living thing and will eventually even cause inorganic things to crumble.

Negative energy, as written, can't even touch nuclear power towards how much damage and death it can do, and (reasonable) people don't call me evil for working with it, even when work necessitates creating hundreds of gallons of leftover liquid waste with zoomies floating in it that does no good whatsoever. I mean, a zombie can still build pyramids and farm and shit.
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by RandomCasualty »

Lago_AM3P at [unixtime wrote:1090373297[/unixtime]]
One day, we will have a no-bullshit explanation for why creating undead (or any use of negative energy) automatically gets the evil label. I mean, creating and working with undead automatically gets you the evil label, even if you summon up the ghost of a kid to determine the location of the serial killer.


The only real explanation I could find with creating undead is that you're disturbing people's graves to get the bodies which you're raising and thus showing no respect for the dead. That's the basis of the "evil" notion of bringing back mindless dead.

However, the designers can't out and out say that, because then they'd have adventurers looting tombs also be performing evil acts, which they certainly don't want.
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

I was under the impression that death attacks were not evil, the Assassin class was evil only because to get in, you had to kill someone for no reason other than to get into the assassins.

Which is an organizational thing, and is kinda stupid, if you ask me.
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by Draco_Argentum »

Lago_AM3P at [unixtime wrote:1090373297[/unixtime]]
Something better than 'it uses negative energy, and negative energy is EEEVILLE!!!'.


That'd be a perfectly good explanation, if negative energy was evil in the first place.
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by RandomCasualty »

Draco_Argentum at [unixtime wrote:1090387805[/unixtime]]
That'd be a perfectly good explanation, if negative energy was evil in the first place.


Negative energy is another place the designers just want to ignore and conviently hope it goes away. They pretty much want to say its evil, but they can't because then they'd have to say positive energy is good and they want evil clerics to be able to heal.
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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by Tae_Kwon_Dan »

They could still call it Evil and then still allow Evil clerics to Heal. Reasoning? Hey, you're Evil fuck the rules.
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Re: Why is Death Attack evil?

Post by Username17 »

Lago wrote:Speaking of which... my job involves operating nuclear power plants, which is about as far as you can get towards slapping the evil label on something. The thing I work with literally has the potential to kill virtually every vertebrate on this planet within minutes and has nasty lingering effects that will screw over any living thing and will eventually even cause inorganic things to crumble.

Negative energy, as written, can't even touch nuclear power towards how much damage and death it can do, and (reasonable) people don't call me evil for working with it, even when work necessitates creating hundreds of gallons of leftover liquid waste with zoomies floating in it that does no good whatsoever.

No, but we are pretty sure your boss is evil. I mean, I can't see how exploiting a loophole in the Federal Government's Infrastructure Matching Funds programs to create expensive poisonous power instead of cheaper cleaner power qualifies as anything but senselessly wicked. (Trivia note: Nuclear Power Plants have one of the highest Capital cost to labor and fuel cost ratios available. Capital costs of power plants count as infrastructure, and the federal government will help pay a proportion of that cost - so while the total cost of a Nuke plant is high, the total cost actually paid by the owners is low).

Of course, I wouldn't do your job. But that's because the people who own your facility present in all seriousness the plan of storing nuclear waste rated for thousands of years in barrels rated for hundreds of years, right over the water table. I know that they have a cavalier attitude towards the safety of the public, and I don't trust them to not cut corners with the safety of their workers.

I mean, a zombie can still build pyramids and farm and shit.


See, zombies are one of the few workers that I would be willing to send to work in a nuclear power plant. They can also work in tanning facilities and coal mines without getting lip cancer and black lung. There really are jobs that can be done in every society that just aren't safe, and replacing those workers with zombies sounds like a Good plan, in addition to simply a smart one.

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Re: Why us Death Attack evil?

Post by User3 »

You really can have an absolute moral system in DnD. Do stuff to people against their consent , unless acting for the greater good, is evil in almost every human society.

Mindless undead not having souls was really a terrible idea. If they had souls, then the whole consent issue would make them evil in a clear and definable way. You could make an argument that you are using someone's body against their consent is evil, or that the living dead spread disease among the living, but that's pretty weak. I think that because they are icky is probably the reason they are evil.

By any criteria, though, Flesh Golems should be evil. One could make an argument that you are creating life, a good act, but thats pretty weak. Any criteria that judeges mindless undead also applies to flesh golems.

Negative enery is evil in the sense that its only good at doing one thing: killing life in a particulary painful way. Its like nerve gas. Nerve gas is in many ways more effiecient at killing enemy troops than artillary shells, but justn about everyone thinks that its evil simply because is has no other purpose than to kill in a brutal and painful fashion.

Cause Wounds spells and energy draining crap an be used for any purpose other than killing, unlike a Fireball which can be used to clear a field or destroy a bridge.

But I think that looting is evil, and a bit different from the "spoils of war." The spoils of war involve taking portable wealth like cash from organizations, and looting involves cutting off fingers to get rings, checking backsides for hidden jewelry, and pulling the gold out of fillings. DnD will never say that looting is evil simply because the point is too subtle for most, and because the magic item system makes it an absolute necessity to cut open a man's belly and search around his guts if you detect a magical aura in his stomach. The value and power of a magic item is so great that the the incentive to "go evil, just this time" is too great.

PS The Assasin PrC requirements include: Alightment: Any evil. Every PrC with Death Attack has the same requirements, to my chagrin.
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