Winter Wolves not having Evil Alignment

[Pav]

What the title suggests. I tried using the ability Smite Evil on a Winter Wolf Alpha during NCE, in the random spawn cave near Ghakis in the valley, though it failed (it did hit).



As you can see, they are clearly not true neutral like other animals.

[SanneJ]

In the books (3th and 3.5) it says that they are "usually neutral evil". they make a clear distinction between always ne and usually ne, so the ravenloft winter wolfs, or even just on that mountain alone, could be lawful good for a we know.

But it also says in the books that they speak common and giant, so next time you could just ask it 

[Norture]

!

Ok team we need confirmation, are our winter wolves the same winter wolves in the books? I wanna see a DM mess with people by having talking wolves talk about how their prey looks so tasty.

[modderpunk]

I did allways thought our winter wolves are pretty small. They are supposed to be large. In fact i have heard them descriped as pony sized.

[SanneJ]

from the book:

"This creature looks like a white wolf with icy blue eyes, it stands as tall as a horse, and its breath smokes with cold. "

It goes on to say that a full grown winter wolf is about 8 feet long, 4.5 feet at the shoulder and 450 pounds. and sometimes serves as tracker, scout or hunter for frost giants.

those are some hardcore wolfs.

[Pav]

In the books (3th and 3.5) it says that they are "usually neutral evil". they make a clear distinction between always ne and usually ne, so the ravenloft winter wolfs, or even just on that mountain alone, could be lawful good for a we know.

Except as in the image above, that is the Ravenloft monster manual and there is no distinction between usually and always.

[Pav]

If they're just cold breathing wolves then a clarification and perhaps a name change would be appreciated.

[NecropolisV]

Definitely.. A non-evil winter wolf is as common as non-evil drow honestly from what i've seen. If these are different winter wolves.. Then okay no biggie, fine not to be evil, but if we are going by the ones in the ravenloft monster manual, gotta make those winter wolves evil!

[Syl]

Are we sure it's the wolves? I thought Smite Evil only effects Evil outsiders and undead.

But it wouldn't surprise me if the winter wolves aren't evil. look at the temple of Anubis for this example their fear before all the spell updates and changes weren't able to be prevented with PFE. you needed mind blank.

I don't feel like any animal in the server is actually.. "Evil" Just extremely territorial.

ALso non evil drow do exist Ebberon has tribes of Drow Ranging from good to evil. but that's off topic

[APorg]

Smite Evil works on any Evil target.

Regular animals aren't Evil, but Winter Wolves are Magical Creatures.

[Norture]

So then yes, the DMs could have winter wolves chatter to each other about how people passing through the mountain pass look so plump, so delicious, and argue about which person in a party they should pick off first.

[APorg]

Well, having a language on a character sheet doesn't mean a creature can necessarily  speak it; their mouths or vocal chords may not be the right shape. Or they may be very limited in what they can pronounce.

But, critically, it means they can understand it. Which is probably bad news for any unwary hunters discussing their plans aloud.

[Crimson Shuriken]

Winter wolves in Ravenloft are the standard D&D winter wolves found in any setting and they can speak. They speak aloud in all manner of novels written and set in D&D settings etc.
They lean toward evil but as a previous poster stated that is not always the case and they can be neutral. That is not specifically wrong even in the Ravenloft setting, no DM would be wrong for having all of their winter wolves be NE, but there is still leeway to make them or one particular NPC encounter be a Neutral alignment. It would be very strange to have a good aligned winter wolf in any setting. They are an OG monster in the game, they have a long established history of how they should be portrayed.

Lastly, that image above is from The definitive 3rd edition Ravenloft Monstrous List, a netbook released by the Fraternity of Shadows. Its not a Ravenloft sourcebook, just to point that out in case anyone was of doubt. The main aim of that document is to provide lore about the monsters from all various sources of monsters for a Ravenloft DM to flesh out the knowledge checks that their players might attempt in regard to monsters. I don't disagree with that document that winter wolves should probably all be evil in this setting, but its just a strong suggestion (like most natural animals and beasts are in this setting)

[Pav]

Yes, specific NPCs and individual Winter Wolves could be neutral aligned.

I see no reasoning for an entire pack to be.

[EO]

I'll change them to Neutral Evil in my next update. For some reason the generic NwN ones were CN.

[ILLY6666]

Goes to show how much Bioware knows, amarite?