Chaotic Evil Druid Behavior

>Eating sapient beings is objectively evil in DnD.

Source?

Honestly don't see it as chaotic or evil in the slightest. Don't even get why yo'd think it was, they're already dead after all.

You don't understand how eating the corpses of people would be considered evil or chaotic?

Really?

Evil never thinks it's so user.

Eh, I guess the impropriety and rejection of authority/tradition can pretty easily be construed as chaotic, but evil? No.
D&D evil is hurting, oppressing and the taking of innocent life ... but a corpse isn't alive. If it wasn't evil to kill them, how could it be evil to eat them?

Desecration of a corpse is considered bad form by a lot of societies in general. Hence burial rights.

It's why things like Necrophilia are considered well... undesirable (read here as evil) traits.

But this is D&D, a game with a whole genre of adventures built around breaking into tombs and emptying them of valuables. Grave robbing's classically considered pretty bad form too.

Not even considering that gods exist in DnD, and a lot are analogs to certain philosophies, most of which condemn desecration as pretty fucking evil.

So yeah, eating the corpse of someone who, not five minutes ago, was a living breathing thinking creature that could have been reasoned with instead of becoming Munchies-Druid snack.

Evil also tend to fall under that as well, as though you should kill them when you can, eating a thinking thing is... bad. just inherently.

You're talking about a setting with absolute morality. In this case, lines have to be drawn - And in most cases, the sin of Cannibalism is considered evil.

The same reason that necromancy is always evil, because fucking with corpses in the improper way is bad. It leads to undead in a lot of cases, and evil corruption in other cases.

In most D&D settings (the ones that use the alignments spoken of) eating bodies eventually fills the cannibal with necromantic powers, and they can become a greater undead themself.

But it isn't cannibalism if it's an orc and you're a human, for example. We eat pigs and dogs and they're pretty smart animals too.

If we're going to say that this is evil because "eating sentient creatures is evil in D&D".. then shouldn't we nit pick elsewhere? Shouldn't we just admit that 90% of what every PC party does is evil acts? Murder hobo's are pretty fucking evil, kill anything/anyone for money and riches.

They cannot communicate meaningfully.

we eat pigs and dogs and cows and shit because they are lesser animals, a sapient (read reasoning) animal would be on the same level, and therefor effective cannibalism. Basically, besides health issues (predatory animals have less nutritious meat after all), it's kinda evil to eat something that can ask you to not.

Why... why does this have to be explained to you?

A responsible druid would SHARE.

Cannibalism is probbably something id let druids do without moral things because nature, but eating without needed to is gluttony which is a sin because it takes from the enviroment more then you need.

Rather if he threw the mauled corpses out for rats it would make more sense.

Let him know however that if he is going to act morally unmarkable if he is transformed into a beast he will have to make the beast form more animal like and take away his int score.

If he is a beast, make him one.

If i play a murder-hobo party, you best believe i'm not the token good character/the sane one.

Murder hobo's are evil, actual parties (read as not going around and murdering things as their job) might vary.

So no, not all PC parties are murder hobos thus not all parties are evil.

but animals are TN in 3.5

I see nothing wrong in eating the flesh of that which you rightfully hunted

Good Gods probably do though, and since they exist in DnD....

If Pelor can punish a druid pc for nibbling on a kobold that invalidates any problem the party might be forced to deal with later.

That kind of immediate justice would simply raise the question "Why didn't they do something about X" and lead to ultimately all actions being considered holy if the dm doesnt immediatly punish people for trying it.

OP here. Let me provide a little bit of background.

Our party was seeking out this group of vaguely Robin Hood-esque bandits who weren't necessarily bad guys, but they'd done some bad things. They'd murdered our employer for an item that's wanted by a lot of people, some bad and some good. We tracked them to their hideout with the intention of bringing them to justice.

We confronted their leader and attempted diplomacy, but that didn't pan out. Combat begins. Our druid has been a bear the whole time, even before we started talking to the bandit leader and his bodyguard. Druid player says "he doesn't have any quarrel with these people" and does nothing until the fight's over. As soon as the fight IS over, he promptly starts eating the face of the bandit leader's dead guard.

Bandit leader was subdued and rendered unconscious but now when he wakes up he's going to find his bodyguard (who was also his brother) missing a face and parts of his neck because the druid just had to be wacky.

sounds like a fucking dickbag of a player to me, with an evil toon to boot.

also eating kobolds would probably piss Pelor, as eating sapient life can have necromatic connotation. Pelor does not like Necromancy,

Are you sure he's playing a druid and not just a bear?

He's a Wood Elf.

Also, is there anything in the PHB or DMG that talks about cannibalism? I'm trying to prove to that player that cannibalism is objectively evil (or at the very least going to affect him negatively) but I don't know where to look for that information.

Bears don't eat people/sapient things very often... if they do they do they are often put down as a nuisance. If he's just being primal, then he wouldn't even be in the party. assuming he's a bear with at least PC level of int, he wouldn't actively choose to eat sapience if he's not hungry.

Look up what the gods condone and condemn.If they are good or neutral usually they don't condone necromancy, which in DnD cannibalism is related to.

I had a look at the RAW definitions of evil in 3.5 and there's no evidence that there's anything evil about eating the dead. I guess you could argue that eating the dead counts as "debasing innocent life" but I think that's straying into the realm of RAI and thus a house-rule.
And once you're down to house-rules and DM fiat then the you have to consider whether it improves the game. Sure the DM can say it's evil but to Rule 0 something like this you should be sure that it clearly makes the game more fun for the majority of people involved.

The absolute morality would only fly if we had clear rules showing that the in-universe absolute morality considers it evil ... something I don't see suffcient evidence for.

>They cannot communicate meaningfully.
Wut? Have you never seen how farm animals scream around slaughter time? It's pretty fucking obvious that no animal wants to be eaten.
>sapient (read reasoning) animal
Sapience is a spook. A meme literally invented just so we can justify eating and hurting other living organisms.

Depends on the setting I guess. If you are the DM and interpret cannibalism to be objectively evil and there's nothing in the PHB or any setting material that conflicts with that then that's how it is in your campaign. Of course, he may not interpret his state while wild shaped to be truly his own, but one of a merging of his own spirit with that of the bear. Of course its equally likely he's just trying to be funny.

>which in DnD cannibalism is related to.

How can I prove this? Where is this info found?

>is there anything in the PHB or DMG that talks about cannibalism
No. There isn't.
If you want it to be objectively evil then as DM that's your prerogative to decide but it's essentially a house-rule. Really though the important question to ask is "will this rule make the game more enjoyable for everyone involved?". That goes for the real rules as much as house-rules though, who cares about something written in the PHB if you don't think it'll improve your game.
imo alignment rules rarely improve the game at all

I'm not DM, but I know the DM disapproves of the cannibalism. Right now I'm just trying to curb the Druid player's behavior before it becomes a bigger problem. I've tried telling him that it's evil but he seems to disagree. My character frowns very heavily on the cannibal bullshit and even though it's just started, if it keeps up it will cause problems for the party.

It's a shame because the character originally appeared as a "wise elder" type and has quickly devolved into chaotic cannibal who mutilates corpses with his fangs for the hell of it, even when he claimed minutes ago he had no quarrels with that now dead person.

Eating something that's dead is neutral.

Any attempt to make it inherently evil if it was sentient is silly.

If it was killed in a nonevil manner then it's fine; treatment of the body is strictly a matter of lawful vs chaos, a matter of whether or not you observe you human tradition. There is no further harm being done, so it's neutral, unless you're, I dunno, eating it to explicitly terrify and traumatize it's allies, in which care the action becomes harmful and thus might be nongood.

>Sapience is a spook. A meme literally invented just so we can justify eating and hurting other living organisms.

Sapience is defined as the ability to reason and too think, sentience is just being aware.

Spiders have sentience, are aware of their surroundings, and generally are fuck heads based on instinct. Humans can reason and think about thinking, which no animal (eat or otherwise) has shown to do. Some get close, but none have developed to the point of sapience.

We eat meat because we evolved that way, hurting a living organism that can't MEANINGFULLY communicate is kinda well... nature. You eat shit below you, get eaten by shit above you, sapience is where i draw the line, but that's arbirary.

Oh, and before you Veganglist on me, i'm genetically incapable of producing certain proteins from other proteins. meaning i have to eat the protein my body needs, and if it happens to be found only in animals (hint all of the ones i don't make are) i have to eat it to be able to live.

>Wut? Have you never seen how farm animals scream around slaughter time? It's pretty fucking obvious that no animal wants to be eaten.
Which is related to Sentience; a scared dog doesn't know why it's scared, just that it's scared. It's aware that it needs to be scared. Sure training and reinforcement will change behaviors, but the dog fucking doesn't understand why you are using a hand symbol, just that when it sees it, and it sits, it gets a treat.
Crying out in pain is not meaningful, howling because you are scared is not meaningful, communicating without meaning is not meaningful. Meaning comes from explanation and language animals can do that

Sapience is by and large the most important aspect of being human, as it's allowed for us to create things like the computer you are using to spread your Peta-like dribble.

Huh, thought there was. I view eating another intelligent (spaient) s an inherently evil act, mostly because it can genuinely ask not to be eaten.

>Druid player says "he doesn't have any quarrel with these people" and does nothing until the fight's over. As soon as the fight IS over, he promptly starts eating the face of the bandit leader's dead guard.

>If he's just being primal, then he wouldn't even be in the party.

What's this player's/character's justification for his character even being part of this party? What is the other playes'/characters' justification for him being part of the party?

This just sounds like a case of "well he's a PC so we're forced to be in the same party because meta game".

The party should just pack up and leave without telling him one night.

Because D&D doesn't consider killing to be outright evil. It's also kinda evil to end the life of a sapient (reasoning) animal that can ask you not. And if you are already killing them, why is it suddenly worse to make use of the corpse? Remember, you killed an intelligent, thinking being, most likely in the name of survival.

Animals also cannibalize each other all the time, and kill for reasons an intelligent creature would be called evil for. Lions eat each other's young to reduce competition, and a horse will kill a mother's foal just so she'll go into estrus and fuck him. I'm sure we'll say they're not really understanding what they're doing, but we're just putting nature on a pedestal. Shit's about survival, the same reason you killed another thinking being. What's the difference besides you being able to rationalize it to live with yourself after the fact?

This isn't as inherent, natural, and universal as you think, user.

Look through some of the origins of undead creatures. I believe Ghouls have text that mentions they were originally created by people eating their kin and being cursed for it, while Wendigos should have something similar. Cannibalism in D&D usually leads to undeath.

The difference is, is that we can do better than nature.

We already have, morality being the moving target that it is. We have computers that function in ways that nature couldn't produce, graspe concepts a moosse would chew at.\

the difference user? well, we argue, fight for esoteric reasons, have esoteric reasons, have beliefs systems, can expound on knowledge and develop technology. Shitt stopped being about survival a loooong time ago, around agriculture. It's now about being better, which is an exclusively (the act of purposefully seeking out to better yourself and those around you) human trait. We see spatterings of it in other creatures, but it's not intense enough to be considered relevant how i see it.

We think user, therefor we are better.

Why is it worse to fuk tht he corpse? because souls exist in DnD, and a lot of burial rites have clauses that state things like 'Shit that happens to body happens to soul' so desicrating a corpse would do the same. I base this on real world faiths, it night work differently in DnD, but the principle is the same. The second thing is about respect, a good character is more likely to pay respect to wishes/body of another creature. There is also no constructive reason to desecrate a sapient corpse that could not be fulfilled by a different (non sapient) thing being killed/eaten/turned into a crossbow.

Doing things that people don't like for no reason other than "I want to"? That's kinda evil bro.

(in case you miss the last part, being selfish is considered evil in the DnD morality system, and eating a corpses face for giggles, or claiming it's food when the fighter has rations for the next 3 or 4 millennia, is selfish and evil)

My advice is to treat the druid's cannibalism like you would treat someone who does graverobbing. Do dead men have rights?

You could say that feasting on a man's bones when you have other options easily available (like small woodland animals) is evil and selfish. You are choosing easy, immediate pleasure that satisfies your instincts over moderation and respect.

It's like pillaging a nearby tomb so you can pay your debts when you have the choice of working a honest job instead. Sure, the corpse doesn't need the meat on his bone or the money he's buried with, but you are still violating the dignity of his death. It would only be acceptable if you had no other choice.

(Of note is that the druid's complete disrespect for the dead contrasts with his respectful live-and-let-live stance towards the living. It looks like he simply believes the living have right, but not the dead...)

Anyway, if it doesn't offend the druid's god, it's certainly going to offend the party. But then again, if the party's a bunch of adventurers, they probably do graverobbing for a living... do they think dead men have no rights, too?
Arguably they could make a case for dead men not having the right to keep riches, but deserving a proper burial and an intact corpse.

Separate from the whole cannibalism issue, you could argue that traveling and working with a group of people, BUT refusing to help them when their life is in danger, AND using them as source of food and bloodshed, is probably neutral evil.

But in the end guy playing the druid sounds like an edgy lolrandumb idiot and nothing more.

>is that we can do better

Yes, we can rationalize the shitty things we do so we don't think of ourselves as evil by a metric we made in the first place. We're certainly better at thinking, but I'm not convinced a human life is inherently superior to an animal. Perhaps we think it is because we haven't moved past the instinct to protect our own (some extending "our own" quite far, others not at all.) We think, but a lot of the time we don't. Individual survival isn't such a huge issue in the first world (since I suppose the third world doesn't really count?) anymore, so now it's mostly about reproduction and ways to facilitate >tfw no gf
Oh, happiness, too. Humans need the same socialization most other social animals do, after all. But make no mistake, you put a human into the shitty situations we created civilization to avoid, and that "evil" behavior tends to come back. Anything to survive.

>Why is it worse to fuk tht he corpse?
Necrophilia occurs in animals as well, but that's typically a result of something wrong. Wires crossed, incorrect formation of structures and so on. In humans it's a similar story I would imagine, called evil for being disgusting spreading disease everywhere. In much the same way cannibalism is evil because human flesh (especially the brain) is unusually filthy and toxic and likely to cause disease, insanity, and death in a way that created stories of ghouls.

We can talk about souls and religion and tradition, but a lot of that stuff has its origins in practicality. We couldn't always purify meat, so eating it was sometimes a risk to health. It wasn't a huge leap from "can make you sick" to "forbidden by god" and a few religions have bans on meat that stick around into today. Doesn't mean meat is inherently evil, or that messing with the dead is. Just that humanity learned to avoid it because it tends to end badly.

It's late. I might continue in the morning if thread's still up. Thanks for being civil.

I went and checked the general guidebook for determining evil-ity in d&d aka book of vile darkness - it doesn't really call out cannibalism as evil. It does list it amongst fetishes and depravations, but it's there together with things like masochism and alcoholism.

If anything you could drag it under "Bringing despair" if the cannibalism has demoralizing effect on everybody else, but otherwise it seems neutral. Mutilating corpses is a-ok if you don't display them to their families, harm the souls or create evil creatures or cast evil spells from them.

>Humans can reason and think about thinking, which no animal (eat or otherwise) has shown to do. Some get close, but none have developed to the point of sapience.
There's no scientific evidence that's the case.
In fact there's no scientific evidence that there's any real qualitative difference between our consciousness and many species of animals. They demonstrate self-awareness, tool use and manufacture, language and so on. We can't prove that they "think about thinking" but that's a failure of our ability to communicate - not proof they can't do it.

>A scared dog doesn't know why it's scared, just that it's scared.
Bullshit. Of course it knows why it's scared. Most likely it's expecting pain, based on the similarity of current conditions to past conditions where it experienced pain/suffering.
>Crying out in pain is not meaningful, howling because you are scared is not meaningful, communicating without meaning is not meaningful.
And that sentence is just logically indefensible. Crying out in pain IS communicating. The organism is communicating that it is in pain. The fact that you can tell it is in pain indicates that it has succeeded in it's attempt at communicatio - it has conveyed meaning!
>hurting a living organism that can't MEANINGFULLY communicate is kinda well... nature
If I start cutting into a pig it will pull away and scream, just the same as if I start cutting into a chink, retard, spastic or baby. Just because I can't translate the sounds any of them are making doesn't make it any less clear that they are trying to communicate a meaning of "stop fucking cutting me"

And don't fucking assume I'm some vegan PETA retard. I eat meat every day, and I'll cheerfully murder it with a bow or my own bare hands when I have the time. What I DON'T do is try to trick myself into believing I'm not killing a living conscious being for my own pleasure. It's fundamentally no different to eating a person bar the fact that one more likely to give me kuru.

>Grave robbing's classically considered pretty bad form too.
But it's not grave robbing it's.. recovering valuable natural resources that the natives are incapable of appreciating properly, and while they are they're they also return any inhabitant to the light by fire and sword, for their own good of course.
#Adventuring as neo-imperialism

>I view eating another intelligent (spaient) s an inherently evil act, mostly because it can genuinely ask not to be eaten.

If they ever do so I will certainly stop, fortunately only a few corpses ever resists, and even fewer talk, much less in a legible language.

Just slip your GM a wikipedia link about Kuru.
If he's gonna act like an animal he won't need int or wis above animal levels anyway.

Hell I think there might be rules for it in BoVD.

Most of the problems created by the lack of the need to focus on survival, we created by not needing to focus on survival, and created a different need. Populations increased as less and less humans died from hunger so the need to produce more food happened and that needed more better.
The fact we can use rationality, in my mind, makes us inherently better than your average creature. The fact we can and do create problems for ourselves, can understand that we are responsible, and take rational action to fix the problem, makes us better than most creatures. Think of locusts. grasshoppers that fucked too much and just changed into a horrifying cloud of fuck, hey do not understand what they are, how to prevent themselves from happening, and are a destructive force in nature (the function of the locust button is population control and probably causes needed extinction events, but hey we can't really know for sure as nature is weird).
Our creation of evil, and by extension good, shows that we have concepts that go past our animal compatriots (as much as i think they are lesser creatures, i still show respect, try to buy responsibly, and generally give thanks to the meat i enjoy. Plants... not so much).This gives us not only the ability to create in our world, but our ability to conceive the nature of the world. This puts us heads and shoulders above that which cannot.

I'm not religious, my argument for cannibalism being evil is simple; i don't want to be eaten by another thinking and rational being. Not for any good reason mind you, but only that i do not want to that to happen. Cannibalism is the act of going against those wishes, and i consider going against the wishes (or rather forcing your will on another) as an evil act. Which means that i am very much about personal behavior, and believe that behavior that effects other people negatively should be punished as evil. I do believe in forcing people to not b assholes together.
This is fun, always be civil.

I'd argue that in a world where cannibals turn into ghouls and wendigos, cannibalism IS evil if only for the fact that you are willfully ensuring your dead body will rise as an undead abomination that will terrorize the living.

Kuru takes years to develop and could presumably be cured with one casting of cure disease.
And also a dick move to introduce arbitrary in-game punishments to soollve an out of game problem.

Superior post.

Unless the druid started eaten the dead at the onset of the adventure it's ben going on for years.

The cannibalism is In game, just theft and you'd jail players for that wouldn't you?

Anyways, the wendigo curse is a better solution as it lets the druid continue his quest for running around naked and shitting in the woods.

There is evidence in the way animals behave in situations, and the lack of language development (ie written language, or comprehensible vocal language). So the evidence is that they so far, have lacked the ability to express that they have the intelligence. the moment i'm read Descartes by a budgie, that's the moment i'll consider something equal.

In regards to Understanding Why, and animals.Do you know what the dog 'guilty' look means? it's fucking terrified. The dog doesn't understand that shitting on the floor is bad, it just knows that the thing that feeds it, and it loves (probably) is making loud angry noises. It might eventually make the connection but they don't reason it out, it's beaten/drilled into them.

Meaningful communication and You!
Meaningful communication in this sense would be something that can convey an idea, not an experience. noises of pain are not meaningful because they are not conveying the idea of pain, they are expressing pain is happening. Important difference.

>that sentence is just logically indefensible.
Well considering i used the word meaningful, again being something more than the basics, it's perfectly defensible. Please tell me how a cry of pain indicates anything other than pain.

A baby is an undeveloped person, comparing it to a fully grown pig is asinine and throwing straw into the fight. It's communicating pain, nothing else can be CLEARLY gleaned from the cries, Ie; it's not meaningful. Which again, means that it conveys ideas and concepts, not just what is currently happening.

I assumed you are a Vegangelist because you are cheapening what it means to be human

If we are no better than animals, then we wouldn't condemn rape, murder, exploitation, selfishness and dickery. We wouldn't have formed civilization if we were not better than a cat, or pig or dog. If we weren't more developed.

We needed MEANINGFUL, communication to do all of that.

Well, i mean before their dead.

Why should that stop me? They also beg not to be killed, but as a righteous warrior I know that they aren't truly sapient, it's just the daemons posessing their dumb animal bodies trying avoid being banished back to hell.

>Lycanthrope
>Alignment: Gain the alignment of the animal
>Bear: Neutral, Wolf: Neutral
>Werebear: Lawful Good
>Werewolf: Chaotic Evil
????

Animals eat what they kill all the fucking time.

How often do they kill an entire herd every day for a week?

I wasn't clear on the third world thing, and i like to address as much as i can, and got distracted by crafting a different wall of text, damn character limits.

Third world hunger and survival mindset has been aggressively cultivated as how things are. The idea that inequity should be the status Quo and whatnot is actually a symptom of moving past the need for survival. Third worlds exist because people want them to, we can produce (thanks to tech and automation) more than enough food for every human on the planet, and if we can't we are definitively on the cusp of being able to.

There's always mass extinction too.

Basically, poverty, the need for a human to have a survival based mindset, and the idea that all humans are not equal (I'm the guy arguing that humans, all humans, are above animals in general) stems from people who have power and strength thinking only of themselves and their immediate cohorts.

The evil behaviors you are talking about, and the violent situations (not just physically so) that create the NEED for survival are the results of someone else evil. Still Evil to do the bad things to survive, but i believe if they could have, the people needing to survive would have done better. I honestly believe, and can support this belief with behavioral based evidence, that social evolution and biological evolution are doing away with what the current civilizations believe is evil, that we are getting better, piecemeal, but doing it.

At least that's how i see it.

To expound on the ending, as i'm a fucking wind bag. You've shown respect, good diction, and good reading comprehension. Why wouldn't i show you respect/be civil?

I mean, being hostile only makes it harder to to express myself and my ideas, and has the chance to galvanize myself and yourself against learning.

always gotta do better right?

Fucked if I know but if they gotta eat, they gotta eat

Who are you quoting? Maybe you should read the actual entry from the SRD.

>Noble creatures such as bears, eagles, and lions tend to produce good-aligned lycanthropes. Sinister creatures such as rats, snakes, and wolves tend to produce evil-aligned lycanthropes. This is a reflection of how these animals are perceived, not any innate quality of the animal itself, so the alignment of the animal form can be arbitrarily assigned.

Animals kill because they are hungry (which the druid was not*explicitly stated by OP*), threatened (it's become clear that the druid was not) or rabid (might be this, but rabid shit should be put down). Some KILL for sport, very rarely do you mutilate for sport.

So basically, he's not an animal, and if he is, he's rabid and should be put down.

You know rabies is a disease and not a mental disorder, right?

You know once rabies reaches a certain point death is inevitable and unavoidable, right? And that's the 'foaming at the mouth chompy chimpy stage'

If you get infected (and are not immediately treated) the infected WILL die. There is no cure. It's not a mental disorder, it's a force of nature.

(the only way to protect other animals and humans is to put down the rabid animal, and this isn't some sort of extremist action, it's what happens. Like sex making babies, bullets cures rabies.)

>Chaotic Evil druid
A Druid cannot be chaotic evil. Druids must have Neutral somewhere in their alignment.

>'Shit that happens to body happens to soul' so desicrating a corpse would do the same.
This makes zero sense what so ever. So if you cremate a corpse, the soul gets burnt to ashes?

Not that user, but how I would rationalize it in a setting of my own would be that eaten corpses before proper burial or equivalent would obstruct their way to the afterlife. Being evil as it leaves a haunting spirit that should have gone to its next stage of existence.

What about making armor out of sapient beings? I'd say it is, dragon armor is unethical =/

What about eating an intelligent Plant creature? Or an intelligent creature that wants you to eat it, like those cows from Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

The player's an edgelord, this is no different from a ranger murdering someone and harvesting their sinews for bowstrings. D&D is not a vehicle for philosophical masturbation about morality and ethics, it assumes that the players are heroic.

>the lack of language development (ie written language, or comprehensible vocal language).
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Animal intelligence/cognition tests are inherently hindered by a communication barrier and often completely foreign and unnatural situations that the animals are placed in. Two dogs barking at each other are communicating in some form and your inability to understand it does not invalidate it. Similarly, a people communicating in a foreign language maybe incomprehensible to you, that doesn't automatically mean they're incapable of intelligence and therefore nonsapient. There's nothing special about reading back a bunch of text to you. You've already been one upped by a parrot on this front when it looked into a mirror and asked what colour it was. The ability to recognise itself as an individual, ask about its characteristics and from it, learn the general notion of the colour grey, easily surpasses Descartes' flawed assumption for human superiority. If you're going to self-aggrandise human intellectual superiority, at least be aware of what was known in animal cognition/intelligence fields over ten years ago.

I'm picking bones here in a thinking out loud kind of way, but how did the first "proper" burial rituals come about? I suppose in most settings where good and evil are practically tangible substances and the supernatural can be systematically proven, they could simply use trial and error (or ye olde the gods taught them everything cop out).

>So I spoke to Horus' ghost last night. He said placing his disemboweled guts into four pots intead of three and burying him with thyme instead of myrrh is totally cramping his passage to the afterlife.

Could be divination to a high priest. In the Elder Scrolls, Arkay made the rite to save the souls from necromancy.

It's just a universal truth. It's abundantly clear in a lot of fantasy settings that gods created mortals in their modern states, with languages and cultures.

claiming that you need evidence of absence to be doubtful of animal cognition seems a bit biased don't you think?

The burden of evidence shouldn't be on someone else for the statement "animals don't think in a way similar to humans".

There's plenty of reasons for a bestial druid to travel with an adventuring party. Pick one:

1) they're saving the world and that is generally a good thing
2) the baddies they're after chopped some trees down or some shit
3) some nature god or what have you told him to help out for reasons unknown and he does so grudgingly
4) he considers the party friends (packmates?)
5) he knows that adventuring is generally the best way to git gud at killing and that's pretty helpful when your job is defending nature from all manner of fucked up things
6) he's into the whole survival of the fittest shtick and wants to beat the bad guy to show he's the best around
7) the other druids think that having it be known that one of that party of swell heroes who the peasants love is a druid would be great for PR
8) he just wants to help people despite being a savage
9) he wants to get powerful/wealthy enough to guarantee the safety of his little patch of wilderness from the king or what have you

etc.

It's really not hard to come up with reasons. That's not to say I don't think it's dumb for a druid to eat the face of everyone he drops, it is. But a more 'sensible' (relatively speaking) druid who occasionally goes overboard and forgets that he's not actually a wolf with a rumbling belly is fine.

If he's eating them as a sign of respect from his culture it's not evil.
If he's eating them so that they don't go to waste it's not evil.
If he's eating them so that he does not starve it's not evil.
If he's eating them to show dominance it is evil.
If he's eating their face so their family can not mour properly it is evil.
The base act is malleable in nature, the motive is not,

Mourn*

The biggest problem with this line of reasoning, is that Cure Disease exists in D&D. The Druid himself can probably cast it too, rendering this point completely null and void. He can probably Remove Curse any sort of ghoul curse or whatnot too.

It depends on WHY they eat their enemies. If it's to emulate an evil deity, it's evil. If it's done out of malice or cruelty, evil.

For druids, not necessarily evil. Same goes for other characters with a valid excuse. I once played a wild elf barbarian who would eat enemies and craft arrowheads and/or trophies from their bones/fangs/claws. He wasn't evil, but didn't want to have his kills go to waste. The beasts of his native woodland homes never killed except for hunger or self-defense, so why would he?

>people keep saying if he kills for hunger its alright
>people either dont read the entire thread or ignore the posts providing background on the situation

ok

>using meme arrows and >implying

Maybe if YOU read the posts you're complaining about, then you'd see that those arguments don't only pertain to the individual in the OP. These threads do a lot more than discuss one single scenario.

Stop being such a drama whore bitch.

>Stop being such a drama whore bitch.

says the dude sperging out

take your own advice bro

Cherry picking for the sake of whining is worse than jacking someone up for doing that.