Achizar wrote:That can work in the short term in a typical party of PCs (killing orcs to prevent them from overrunning the countryside), but could be difficult long term (because inevitably a TN will have to prevent someone good from overreaching as well). All this speaks more to the difficulties of TN as a concept than it does the druid as a PC class, though, at least if you concede that druids can be NG/NE.
NetRodent wrote:Achizar wrote:That can work in the short term in a typical party of PCs (killing orcs to prevent them from overrunning the countryside), but could be difficult long term (because inevitably a TN will have to prevent someone good from overreaching as well). All this speaks more to the difficulties of TN as a concept than it does the druid as a PC class, though, at least if you concede that druids can be NG/NE.The Good/Evil axis of alignment always struck me as very subjective. The paladin that slays a rampaging horde of orcs, did good when measured by human standards. When measured by orcish standards, the paladin is evil because he slew a migratory tribe of orcs looking for new lands to settle and raise families. The Druidic neutreal comes from realizing that the countryside is being overrun by both orcs and humans, and neither side has the best interest of the "countrside" itself at heart; they both want to exploit it.Furthermore, consider Tree-beard from Lord of the Rings. He's as close to a neutral character as possible. "Which side are you on?" one of the Hobbits asks. "I'm on nobodies side, because nobody is on my side" the ent replies. The ents didn't care about the epic struggle between good and evil because it didn't involve them. The ents couldn't have cared less if the orcs killed every last man, elf, and hobbit; they only sacked Isengard because the orcs were destroying the forest.
Deadlord36 wrote:Well, they had a long-standing feud with orcs anyways, so killing them was a personal thing.Excellent point, the Ents are probably the closest thing to Neutral possible.
deimos3428 wrote:Deadlord36 wrote:Well, they had a long-standing feud with orcs anyways, so killing them was a personal thing.Excellent point, the Ents are probably the closest thing to Neutral possible.I'm going for a half-ent/half-green slime druid!
The Good/Evil axis of alignment always struck me as very subjective. The paladin that slays a rampaging horde of orcs, did good when measured by human standards. When measured by orcish standards, the paladin is evil because he slew a migratory tribe of orcs looking for new lands to settle and raise families. The Druidic neutreal comes from realizing that the countryside is being overrun by both orcs and humans, and neither side has the best interest of the "countrside" itself at heart; they both want to exploit it.
Furthermore, consider Tree-beard from Lord of the Rings. He's as close to a neutral character as possible. "Which side are you on?" one of the Hobbits asks. "I'm on nobodies side, because nobody is on my side" the ent replies. The ents didn't care about the epic struggle between good and evil because it didn't involve them. The ents couldn't have cared less if the orcs killed every last man, elf, and hobbit; they only sacked Isengard because the orcs were destroying the forest.