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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    RedKnightGirl

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    Default Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    And I posit that if said hyper-intelligent solar is unable to explain to a human why the action is wrong, even in terms of consequences or laymans terms, than, to that human, it isn't wrong.
    Fixed that for you.

    If humans are unable to perceive the consequences of their actions, than those actions probably aren't wrong.

    D&D achnowledges that animals are not evil despite doing actions that would, for a human, be despicable, because the game achnowledges they dont have the capacity to know right and wrong. If humans in D&D are literally incapable of seeing how their actions are evil, and they do not cause any perceptible suffering or negstive consequences even when pointed out to them, I absolutely dont think it is appropriate to label the characters as evil for doing what they feel as right, nor do I think it is appropriate to moralize the PLAYERS and call them names because they are running on real world morality rather than bizarro world morality.
    Spoiler: Spoilers for Tales of Xillia
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    One of the villains' plots is to use an adjacent world as a power-source. It is explicitly called "The Other World Reactor" Plan. The villains of this scheme are primarily faceless to the player, but their motivations are laid in plain sight and it's hard to see how from the villains' perspective what they're doing is wrong or harmful.

    The two worlds cannot directly interact or view each other at this point in the story.

    The consequences of the "Other World Reactor" plan is to essentially use the magical potential of a different group of people as living batteries. The party *can* see this and in fact literally experiences it several times. Everyone who experiences the effect suffers for it. It is physiologically draining and potentially lethal if left unchecked. The one character from the world benefiting from the scheme is torn, despite it being half of his motivation for being there in the first place.

    To the people of the world benefiting from the "Other World Reactor" plan, failing to push on wards will cause irreparable harm to their world and society as individuals dependent on such power are left without crucial medical services. The populace largely cannot see or perceive any potential harm from actually succeeding; even though their success is based on the unknowing slavery of an entire different planet as a fuel source.


    Is such a thing evil? The group that is arguably doing something evil is largely incapable of observing *any* negative consequences of their actions, even though the party (and by extension) the audience is painfully aware of what those consequences are. No one comes back in the sequel to discuss the morality of it (by then, everyone is capable of communicating with each other, a more accessible alternative has been discovered, and there is no real animosity about the situation). However, even though after the fact the aggressive side can see the consequences of its attempted actions, it does not change the fact that until it was capable of observing those consequences none of its members even considered there to be any.

    Just because the Necromancer cannot perceive any harm being done does not mean it is not doing harm.
    Last edited by Ghost Nappa; 2019-02-16 at 07:48 PM.