Is poison use evil?

[Zale]

Despite the fact that Playgrounders have never come to a consensus on alignments in general--discussions of such are a necessary aspect of the game, especially in DMing. And yes, it is a game--but a very complex one that incorporates an ambiguous moral/ethical set of rules.

The purpose of this thread, and others, is to share ideas. And yes, sometimes these threads serve only to entrench Playgrounders in their firmly held beliefs--but often, if you look closely enough, you'll find perspectives that present valid points. It's good for obtaining insight.

You're right about that. It's just that It annoys me to watch people try to cramp their own views into it. Morality is a complicated thing in real life, much more so than D&D.

I mean, I could argue that the majority of player characters are evil because most of them have killed sentient beings before. Most of the time, this is at least justified by those beings being evil themselves or something, but that doesn't change that they are both murdering and robbing other beings. What separates them from some random bandit on a lonely road? The fact that they are fighting for something? Or, "Goblins are evil, so slaughter away."?

It swiftly dissolves into senseless bickering.

[Burner28]

By raw, poison is evil. Technically, this even includes poisons used against evil creatures, and ravages, which are designed only to affect evil creatures.

Personally, I'd say it isn't so much evil as dishonourable, by preventing a fair fight. When someone faces you sword to sword, they can reasonably know what to expect. If your sword is poisoned however, they can't know it just by looking, so it inherently makes the fight less fair.

Dishonourable? Shouldn't it rather be considered a pragmatic form?

[Talakeal]

Then you're misreading the premise. There are NO attack forms that are inherently Evil (unless they use baby souls to be powered or something, but that's different). What is Evil is how you deploy those attack forms. If you deploy them in a way that has a reasonable chance of hurting an innocent, and you know that when you deploy them, then that's Evil. If you stab an innocent with a holy avenger, that's still an Evil act. If you stab a blackguard with a poisoned sword and save the village, that's a Good act. Intent matters, tools do not. Not unless the means of procuring those tools is itself Evil (i.e. spells that draw on the power of the Abyss or something).

Would that that was true by RAW, but it isn't. Killing a Blackguard with a poisoned sword is worse than watching the village burn according to the BoED / BoVD morality system.

[SPoD]

Wait, wait, detecting logical incongruence. So I can poison my own food (let's say, because I'm immune to poison and I like the flavour it adds to the meal) and if someone eats it then it's not Evil because it's not my fault they wandered into my house and ate my food?

Correct. If you really wanted to be on the safe side, you would make sure that everyone who worked with you knew that you did this.

To frame it in the real world, if I am eating a dish that contains peanuts, and someone who is deathly allergic to them eats my food when I'm not looking, I didn't do anything Evil by eating peanuts. They did something stupid by eating my food, but that's not my fault. I could have been extra careful and warned them immediately, but if it slipped my mind or I didn't know they were there, well, that's just an accident.

But if I deliberately put peanuts into a meal that I know that person will eat, then that would be Evil. In fact, that would actually be considered murder in the real world, even though peanuts are harmless to 99% of the population.

So if there's a skeleton set to kill whoever grabs my Pearl of Power off the shelf, and there's an earthquake that rips a hole on the vault's ceiling, and a little girl climbs down, picks up the shiny pearl and gets killed, what's the morality on that? Is setting up the skeleton-trap evil? Am I evil now because I got a little girl killed?

It's getting sort of shady here, but my best answer is "not necessarily," assuming that using a skeleton in the first place isn't Evil. It was an accident. If the local guardsman has a crossbow that he brings home, and his daughter sneaks into his bedroom to play with it and accidentally kills herself, owning a crossbow doesn't become Evil. Carelessness is not the same thing as disregard or indifference.

Yes, sorry, I misspoke. I didn't mean to imply that objects were evil, I was merely curious as to the difference between carelessly poisoning something and any other action with potential unintended harm to others.

It's really a difference of your ability to predict the consequences of your actions. If there's a chance that an innocent could be hurt by your action if there were no other unexpected circumstances, then it's probably Evil. In the earthquake/skeleton example, you didn't know there was going to be an earthquake. In the poisoning your own food example, you didn't know anyone else was going to eat your food. Those circumstances radically change the threat level of the situation.

Conversely, if you set a trap at the front door of your house, then anyone knocking on your door could be killed. You can't reasonably control who walks up and knocks, so setting that trap is Evil. Likewise, if you poison food that you yourself are not going to eat and/or have direct control over the entire time, then you're taking the risk that someone else could eat it before it got to your target.

[Zale]

So if there's a skeleton set to kill whoever grabs my Pearl of Power off the shelf, and there's an earthquake that rips a hole on the vault's ceiling, and a little girl climbs down, picks up the shiny pearl and gets killed, what's the morality on that? Is setting up the skeleton-trap evil? Am I evil now because I got a little girl killed?

Part of me wants to say yes, but honestly, there's not much way to know an earthquake would happen.

If your character did not attempt to make some kind of amends to the grieving family, then he's are probably slipping on the good scale of things.

Strikes me more as an ill-planned act than an evil one, though just shrugging it off would be evil.

[SPoD]

Would that that was true by RAW, but it isn't. Killing a Blackguard with a poisoned sword is worse than watching the village burn according to the BoED / BoVD morality system.

I understand, but that was my initial position: That such an act is NOT evil, but poisoning food is. RAW doesn't matter to me at all.

[Big Fau]

Part of me wants to say yes, but honestly, there's not much way to know an earthquake would happen.

If your character did not attempt to make some kind of amends to the grieving family, then he's are probably slipping on the good scale of things.

Strikes me more as an ill-planned act than an evil one, though just shrugging it off would be evil.

It's a freak accident. There's nothing evil about it (aside from making the skeleton animate, usually), and ignoring the result is neutral at worst (neutral can be indifferent towards life).

[crazyhedgewizrd]

most medicines are poisons

[Shadowknight12]

Correct. If you really wanted to be on the safe side, you would make sure that everyone who worked with you knew that you did this.

To frame it in the real world, if I am eating a dish that contains peanuts, and someone who is deathly allergic to them eats my food when I'm not looking, I didn't do anything Evil by eating peanuts. They did something stupid by eating my food, but that's not my fault. I could have been extra careful and warned them immediately, but if it slipped my mind or I didn't know they were there, well, that's just an accident.

Huh. Okay, I see the logic in that, but you hinge a lot of the "Evilness" on whether the person is aware or not of the consequences of their actions and wilfully chooses to ignore them. What about characters of lesser intelligence? A character with Intelligence 3 is still playable, but you would be hard pressed to say that he's aware of what the consequences of his actions are when he casts fireball into a crowd. It might seem perfectly obvious to you, but to them, the idea that other people might be harmed by his actions honestly didn't even cross their minds. And this is a very obvious example. If they fathom the idea to put poison on the evil tyrant's food, it's perfectly possible that, in their simplemindedness, they never even considered that someone other than the evil tyrant might eat the food. That's not a wilful disregard of the consequences of an action, it's simply being unaware of them, just like my example with the earthquake and the vault.

But if I deliberately put peanuts into a meal that I know that person will eat, then that would be Evil. In fact, that would actually be considered murder in the real world, even though peanuts are harmless to 99% of the population.

What if the target is Evil? What if the target is a fiend who is bizarrely not immune to poison, and can be safely eliminated with that tactic with minimal risks to all involved?

It's getting sort of shady here, but my best answer is "not necessarily," assuming that using a skeleton in the first place isn't Evil. It was an accident. If the local guardsman has a crossbow that he brings home, and his daughter sneaks into his bedroom to play with it and accidentally kills herself, owning a crossbow doesn't become Evil. Carelessness is not the same thing as disregard or indifference.

Darn, I keep forgetting that standard D&D says that creating a skeleton is evil. Oh, well, replace that with "golem" or other mindless automaton.

Okay, I follow your logic there.

It's really a difference of your ability to predict the consequences of your actions. If there's a chance that an innocent could be hurt by your action if there were no other unexpected circumstances, then it's probably Evil. In the earthquake/skeleton example, you didn't know there was going to be an earthquake. In the poisoning your own food example, you didn't know anyone else was going to eat your food. Those circumstances radically change the threat level of the situation.

Again, while perfectly sound logic, it hinges heavily on the person knowing about the consequences of their actions. To you, an earthquake might be unpredictable, but an expert might see it coming weeks before it happens (or an architect might spot the place in the vault's ceiling that would obviously crack open at the slightest tremor). Conversely, to you, it's obvious that people other than the intended target might eat the poisoned food. To a person with an Intelligence score of 3, the tragic results might be just as unpredictable as the earthquake was to you.

Conversely, if you set a trap at the front door of your house, then anyone knocking on your door could be killed. You can't reasonably control who walks up and knocks, so setting that trap is Evil. Likewise, if you poison food that you yourself are not going to eat and/or have direct control over the entire time, then you're taking the risk that someone else could eat it before it got to your target.

And if I live in the middle of nowhere, where a visit is actually an incredibly rare circumstance, and I have every reason to believe (perhaps due to local demographics) that whoever wants to pay me a visit is likely bent on my death and horrible suffering?

Part of me wants to say yes, but honestly, there's not much way to know an earthquake would happen.

If your character did not attempt to make some kind of amends to the grieving family, then he's are probably slipping on the good scale of things.

Strikes me more as an ill-planned act than an evil one, though just shrugging it off would be evil.

Again, to you it might be a bizarre and inexplicable event. To an expert, it might be obvious with nary a glance.

Uh, why? If I am physically incapable of feeling (say, I've made the decision to have a super Calm Emotions spell made permanent on my person, or I have been cursed by a witch with an inability to feel), why is it evil if I don't care about the little girl's death? What kind of "amend" can I make up to the parents that can possibly make up for the fact that their little girl is dead (and let's assume, obviously, that she's perfectly happy in the afterlife and refuses a True Resurrection)? The only reasons to "make amends" are to assuage personal guilt or because one's personal ethics demand it so. If I don't feel personal guilt and my code of ethics don't demand that I make amends, then doing absolutely nothing is not evil, by any token of the word.

And also, that doesn't make me "not Good" either. If I understand that it would be culturally unwise to make amends (the parents might react in rage and be insulted by the very idea of anything compensating for their daughter's loss), then I shouldn't stop being considered Good because I choose to do nothing. And if I don't feel sad for the little girl (for whatever reason), that shouldn't make me not Good either. By RAW, feelings are not mandatory in alignment. If I choose to roleplay a warforged as a creature who cannot feel anything at all, that shouldn't prevent me from playing him as a paladin who upholds ethics and morality all the same.

[Zale]

It's a freak accident. There's nothing evil about it (aside from making the skeleton animate, usually), and ignoring the result is neutral at worst (neutral can be indifferent towards life).

It's not the accident itself, it's the reaction towards it. It may be neutral to be indifferent to life, but it's certainly not something (In my opinion) a good character would do on a regular basis.

If you think differently, then that is fine.

Uh, why? If I am physically incapable of feeling (say, I've made the decision to have a super Calm Emotions spell made permanent on my person, or I have been cursed by a witch with an inability to feel), why is it evil if I don't care about the little girl's death? What kind of "amend" can I make up to the parents that can possibly make up for the fact that their little girl is dead (and let's assume, obviously, that she's perfectly happy in the afterlife and refuses a True Resurrection)? The only reasons to "make amends" are to assuage personal guilt or because one's personal ethics demand it so. If I don't feel personal guilt and my code of ethics don't demand that I make amends, then doing absolutely nothing is not evil, by any token of the word.

That's a bit of a stretch with the magic, but understandable. And perhaps amends is a little strong..

I know saying this is going to bite me in the but somehow, but..

If you set up something in such a way that it could possibly kill some random innocent person, then you should at least admit it's your fault to some degree.

If not your fault, then at least poorly thought out.

And also, that doesn't make me "not Good" either. If I understand that it would be culturally unwise to make amends (the parents might react in rage and be insulted by the very idea of anything compensating for their daughter's loss), then I shouldn't stop being considered Good because I choose to do nothing. And if I don't feel sad for the little girl (for whatever reason), that shouldn't make me not Good either. By RAW, feelings are not mandatory in alignment. If I choose to roleplay a warforged as a creature who cannot feel anything at all, that shouldn't prevent me from playing him as a paladin who upholds ethics and morality all the same.

I thought that it was generally considered that compassion and caring towards other beings was Good.

Showing indifference towards life, or the fact that someone nearby has died strikes me as neutral but not Good.

Sure, there are exceptions, but still.

[Shadowknight12]

That's a bit of a stretch with the magic, but understandable. And perhaps amends is a little strong..

I know saying this is going to bite me in the but somehow, but..

If you set up something in such a way that it could possibly kill some random innocent person, then you should at least admit it's your fault to some degree.

If not your fault, then at least poorly thought out.

Admitting fault and feeling guilty are two different beasts. You can admit that you are responsible for a negative consequence and endeavour to make repairs as the damaged party sees fit, but that doesn't mean that you must feel anything at all.

I thought that it was generally considered that compassion and caring towards other beings was Good.

Showing indifference towards life, or the fact that someone nearby has died strikes me as neutral but not Good.

Sure, there are exceptions, but still.

"Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.

No compassion or caring. You can respect life, yes, but respecting life doesn't preclude you from building traps to protect yourself or engaging in violent actions. Otherwise paladins could not exist, because they are both Good and capable of inflicting grievous harm upon others. Good spellcasters, similarly, are able to cast AoE spells that damage indiscriminately. The potential for harm is there, but that doesn't preclude Good from using it.

the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others

While both concern and devotion can be described as feelings, it's also possible to speak of them on a context devoid of emotional meaning. You can be concerned for and devoted to the welfare of others without actually feeling anything. Again, the warforged example comes to mind, along with good-aligned undead or elementals, if I choose to roleplay either as having lost (or never gained) the ability to feel emotions.

[Taelas]

Dishonourable? Shouldn't it rather be considered a pragmatic form?

Many pragmatic things are considered dishonorable.

[RPGuru1331]

If your character did not attempt to make some kind of amends to the grieving family, then he's are probably slipping on the good scale of things.

That would be neutral. It's uncaring. What would be evil would be dancing on the kid's grave.

The possibility of collateral damage does not itself make something evil. You should work to minimize it, but that's not the same as deliberately causing collateral damage. If the mere occurence of collateral damage on innocents automatically meant that your action was evil, if the corrupt duke had set up some sort of hostage retribution, and you didn't realize, or did realize but thought you had already taken care of it, and you sword him and the hostages are killed, the killing of the duke was evil and you're responsible for it. You'd have to go out of your way to increase collateral damage on the undeserving. Poisoning food isn't going to cut it. But poisoning the big community dishes is.

[Lord_Gareth]

By what metric can any person in the corrupt noble's employ that is specifically tasked with protecting and perpetuating said corrupt noble's rule be termed an 'innocent'? I could see arguments of coercion.. but the same could be said of the duke's soldiers, and as far as I've seen, such people are considered fair game, if not priority targets, and understandably so.

You'll note that I didn't say he was any more innocent than the soldiers, but the soldiers are often seen as more acceptable targets because they knew their job entailed risking death when they signed up (yes, I know, the same can be said of the food taster). What I said was that the death of an innocent person - or, at least, collateral damage - is a bad thing. I then later stated that invading the Duke's keep would be worse.

Does that clarify my point any?

[SPoD]

Huh. Okay, I see the logic in that, but you hinge a lot of the "Evilness" on whether the person is aware or not of the consequences of their actions and wilfully chooses to ignore them. What about characters of lesser intelligence? A character with Intelligence 3 is still playable, but you would be hard pressed to say that he's aware of what the consequences of his actions are when he casts fireball into a crowd.

On the contrary, I would say that a character with an Intelligence of 3 is still fully capable of determining that using a fireball where a person is standing will hurt that person. If they know that using a fireball can hurt their enemies, then they clearly know that a fireball can hurt someone. Ultimately, whether it "crosses their mind" or not doesn't matter. One could easily say that the reason a given low-Int person is Evil is precisely because this stuff doesn't cross their mind when they're doing their Evil acts—but that doesn't make them not Evil. If they're sentient, they're capable of basic determinations about what might happen if they throw fire into a crowd, and therefore are responsible for their own actions. The moment of crisis simply shifts from "Did they take an action that they knew would hurt an innocent?" to "Did they stop to think about their actions at all?"

If they can't understand the simple consequences of their action, then they're an animal or insane. I guess that's a difference in how we view the Intelligence scale, though. Int 3 does not mean mentally disabled in my estimation, it just means really, really stupid.

As far as the earthquake, experts in the real world can't predict earthquakes. You would need supernatural assistance to predict one in a D&D world, and I wouldn't call it Evil to not consult an oracle about every single thing you ever do. If the ability to perceive the possible danger is within the character's grasp, and they choose to ignore it, then Evil. If the ability to perceive the danger requires spells/magic items/class abilities that the character does not have, then it's not Evil. It's just beyond them.

A truly Good character wouldn't set a golem up to kill people who touched their stuff in the first place. At the very least, the golem would be set to restrain, not kill. So, setting the trap itself is in the grey area, hence the reason I said it was getting shady in my first response. If the person who owns the golem is a powerful wizard or cleric who could easily cast a divination to determine if anyone innocent would be killed by that golem and just didn't...well, then we're getting a little closer to an Evil act.

[SuperFerret]

Many pragmatic things are considered dishonorable.

It's kind of the definition of dishonorable, which is "not honorable" and being honorable requires setting up arbitrary rules in order to make yourself sit firmly in the "right" category.

[Taelas]

Those arbitrary rules can also cover pragmatic things. For instance, it is often pragmatic to tell the truth, which is honorable. (It is also often pragmatic to lie, which is not.)

[SuperFerret]

Yeah, but typically, being honorable means taking the hard road, such as when honor tells you to fight fair.

[Taelas]

Yes, but it does mean that something pragmatic is not necessarily dishonorable (even if it often is).

[Shadowknight12]

On the contrary, I would say that a character with an Intelligence of 3 is still fully capable of determining that using a fireball where a person is standing will hurt that person. If they know that using a fireball can hurt their enemies, then they clearly know that a fireball can hurt someone. Ultimately, whether it "crosses their mind" or not doesn't matter. One could easily say that the reason a given low-Int person is Evil is precisely because this stuff doesn't cross their mind when they're doing their Evil acts—but that doesn't make them not Evil. If they're sentient, they're capable of basic determinations about what might happen if they throw fire into a crowd, and therefore are responsible for their own actions. The moment of crisis simply shifts from "Did they take an action that they knew would hurt an innocent?" to "Did they stop to think about their actions at all?"

But what if they don't, in fact, know this? Depending on how you fluff your sorcerers' powers, there's nothing in the rules that says that a sorcerer must know the effects his spells are going to have before casting them the first time. If a sorcerer levels up, the player picks Fireball as his new spell known, and then has the sorcerer "reach into his inner power" to cast a spell for immediate self defence, it's debatable whether or not the sorcerer is fully aware of what the spell does. He might feel it evokes fire at an enemy, but he might be unaware of the area damage.

If they can't understand the simple consequences of their action, then they're an animal or insane. I guess that's a difference in how we view the Intelligence scale, though. Int 3 does not mean mentally disabled in my estimation, it just means really, really stupid.

This is where I think you're wrong. Intelligence 1 and 2 is animal-like. There is an ample spectrum of mental disability that is still above animal-like intelligence. In fact, you could say that people with intelligence from 3 to an arbitrary number (6, 7 or 8) are, in fact, mentally challenged. And as such, they have trouble fully apprehending the consequences of their actions.

As far as the earthquake, experts in the real world can't predict earthquakes. You would need supernatural assistance to predict one in a D&D world, and I wouldn't call it Evil to not consult an oracle about every single thing you ever do. If the ability to perceive the possible danger is within the character's grasp, and they choose to ignore it, then Evil. If the ability to perceive the danger requires spells/magic items/class abilities that the character does not have, then it's not Evil. It's just beyond them.

Actually, they can. That's why Seismology is a valid career choice and why we have incredibly sensitive equipment designed precisely for such a reason. In D&D, you could conceivably have creatures with Tremorsense aware of an impending earthquake days before other creatures notice it. Or, more mundanely, the wizard chooses to live in an area he fully knows is renown for its earthquakes. And anyone with a rank in Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering) can pass the DC 10 check to tell that the vault has been shoddily built. Is there a difference in this scenario if the wizard passes the check and chooses to ignore the potential consequences and if he doesn't?

A truly Good character wouldn't set a golem up to kill people who touched their stuff in the first place. At the very least, the golem would be set to restrain, not kill. So, setting the trap itself is in the grey area, hence the reason I said it was getting shady in my first response. If the person who owns the golem is a powerful wizard or cleric who could easily cast a divination to determine if anyone innocent would be killed by that golem and just didn't...well, then we're getting a little closer to an Evil act.

Why not? Look at the paladin. He is meant to harm and kill. He is a living, evil-detecting weapon, with a meagre spell list, some healing, a mount and the ability to Remove Disease 1/week. If Good was against harming and killing, paladins would be completely different. At the very, very least, there would be a "no killing" part in their Code.

So, basically, you're saying that the more power the character has, the more he has to watch out for all the myriad ways things can go wrong?

And what about reality alteration? What if a wizard casts Wish or a cleric casts Miracle and reality is rewritten? What happens then? What happens if, unbeknownst to them, their reality rewrite "erases" some people from existence, or inadvertently causes someone's death? Is that evil? Or is it evil if they didn't cast a divination first to apprehend the possible consequences of their actions?

[LaughingRogue]

Not evil and I've home-ruled it as such in every game I've ever run and taken the evil prereq out of assassin (as well as the added stuff about killing some random person just to join the assassin's).