Alignements, nature of the planes, postive and negative energy, oh my !

[Elderand]

Thread for the continuation of the debate in this thread

Things that tick us off (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=287697)

Deepbluediver asked for an exemple of negative energy doing something to help living creature that positive energy doesn't do. The only such thing is keeping positive energy in check. Negative energy doesn't actievly do anything to help living creature, but it's existance prevent horrible thing happening from a surplus of positive energy.


Balance is important, I will certainly grant you that. But we know that a living body can handle some amount of positive energy without collapsing, just like it can handle certain thresholds of heat and cold. It's impossible to kill someone with a Heal or Cure Wounds spell, whereas its VERY easy to kill someone with a Harm or Raise Dead spell.
So in a vacuum, I doubt a small amount of positive energy would make you explode. By contrast, in a vacuum there is no amount of negative energy that would make a living creature feel better.

You appear to be stuck in the mindset that something has to actively do something for it be considered as having an effect. The point is that positive energy is dangerous if in surplus, the material plane is not in a situation of surplus of positive energy because it also contain negative energy that syphon that surplus off.


Secondly, when you draw on positive energy to heal, it seems like the energy is effectively consumed or burned up. It doesn't hang around like it does if you create a zombie, lich, or anything in between.

But what happens when you use a cure spell and it cure more HP than you can have ? Cure spell don't grant temporary hit points, so any energy that would grant HP beyond the max must go somewhere else. I think it is not unreasonable to consider it dumped into the environement.
It's even worsee when one consider thing like mass heal, there is no real limit to how much healing it provide, just how much healing it provide to any one creature. Whether you heal 20 creatures or just one you have expanding the same amount of positive energy, that energy must be going somewhere.


And, by your own admission: "every cleric casting a healing spell is upsetting the balance in the opposite direction, bringing more positive energy into the world (which, once again, in large quantity make you explode). I'd say it's just as bad".
So this doesn't mean that creating undead isn't evil, it just means that you think healing spells are ALSO evil.

I didn't say healing someone was evil, I said it was bad for balance. The good/evil axis is problematic because it present itself as a cosmic axis AND a morality thing.
If we separate the morality from the cosmic balance aspect we end up with this result. Healing can be moraly good or evil depending on the situation (Healing the sick = moraly good, Healing a torture victim to keep them alive for further torture = moraly bad)
From the cosmic balancing act an healing spell is cosmicly evil if it isn't balanced by an equal amount of negative energy.

[Raven777]

Balance is important, I will certainly grant you that. But we know that a living body can handle some amount of positive energy without collapsing, just like it can handle certain thresholds of heat and cold. It's impossible to kill someone with a Heal or Cure Wounds spell, whereas its VERY easy to kill someone with a Harm or Raise Dead spell.
So in a vacuum, I doubt a small amount of positive energy would make you explode. By contrast, in a vacuum there is no amount of negative energy that would make a living creature feel better.

There is no amount of sword to the face that would make a living creature feel better, either. I don't see weapons being tagged with the [Evil] destriptor, though. :smalltongue:

[SaintRidley]

There are a few creatures native to the Negative Energy Plane, like the Trilloch.

It's CN, feeds off the life force of dying creatures (nature's euthanasia), and only lives on the NEP.

[Hamste]

There is no amount of sword to the face that would make a living creature feel better, either. I don't see weapons being tagged with the [Evil] destriptor, though. :smalltongue:

At least non-magical weapons :smalltongue:

Anyways, Positive energy does have a negative affects to certain creatures that aren't even dead (though they might be half dead). The most obvious example is Dhampirs though I am pretty sure if someone searched hard enough they could find other living creatures with Negative Energy Affinity.

Just because negative energy hurts most living things does not make it any more evil then a spell with the fire descriptor. Similar thing with the whole undead thing. Sentient undead are most likely to be evil simply because everyone associates it with evil, if more people viewed undeath as a good thing then the trend would even out quickly. Same with mindless undead, if people didn't think it was evil then more people would use them for good.

[Raven777]

I tend to view uncontrolled mindless undead as a liability though. As in, they'll openly attempt to destroy life on sight until someone with Command Undead comes around to order them not to. They are literally negative energy powered robots with a "destroy life" prime directive hard coded in their circuit board. Leave them alone without directions in a garden and they'll squash all your cabbage heads.

Sentient ones, they have the urge to destroy life in some characteristic way (vampires want to drink blood, shadows want to drain strength, ghouls want to eat flesh), but they are more like functioning addicts. They still have their own mind and reason, because they are still the same soul. But the negative energy that's now sustaining them tends to skew their behavior towards the destruction of life. So if they see a burning orphanage, there'll be a literal force of nature influencing them to not intervene and let the children burn. If their party raids an Orc village, there'll be a literal force of nature making them think executing the prisoners is a matter of course. In my book, that's what makes sentient undead always evil.

The question hinges on how overriding that evil is. Between the morally bankrupt Lich who revels in destruction and the one who tries to channel centuries of research towards more constructive ends, there's a wide grey area of villains, anti-villains and anti-heroes. They can be Evil without being [Evil] is what I mean. The same way a sword can be applied to positive results.

[Kelb_Panthera]

There are a few creatures native to the Negative Energy Plane, like the Trilloch.

It's CN, feeds off the life force of dying creatures (nature's euthanasia), and only lives on the NEP.Where's the trilloch entry?

As I was trying to explain in the other thread, the creation of undead (and only their creation) is evil, not because it uses or requires negative energy but because the undead constantly radiate negative energy forever after.

Negative energy is not, in and of itself evil. However, the limited scope of its application makes it nearly impossible to use in a good way. Neutral, sure; good, not so much.

More importantly, because undead constantly radiate this energy that is -always- harmful to life, the act of creating an undead creature is, in essence, the same thing as punching a tiny hole reality and doing harm to the very concept of life itself.

You really can't get much more antithetical to the respect for life that is a cornerstone of Good. Creating undead isn't just choosing not to respect life. It's actively choosing to disrespect the very concept of life.

[Elderand]

Meanwhile deathless are considered good despite quite logicly radiating just as much positive energy forever as undead do negative energy. And positive energy can be just as dangerous for life.

Face it, good and evil are not determined by actual effect or any sort of logic in DnD. The logic behind it is simply this "are players meant to kill it ? If yes it's evil, if not it's good"

And trilloch is from monster manual 3 and is not an undead, so there is an exemple of non undead profiting from negative energy.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Meanwhile deathless are considered good despite quite logicly radiating just as much positive energy forever as undead do negative energy. And positive energy can be just as dangerous for life.Only in sufficient quantities. The level we're talking about here is small enough that deathless (who aren't any more inherently good than undead are inherently evil) if gathered in a collective of 11 or more HD would simply cause plant life nearby to grow a bit bigger and a bit faster and would make people in the area bit more vigorous than they might otherwise be. It's not natural, and should upset druids, but it's not harmful either.


Face it, good and evil are not determined by actual effect or any sort of logic in DnD. The logic behind it is simply this "are players meant to kill it ? If yes it's evil, if not it's good"That's a rather dramatic oversimplification. Suffice it to say; I disagree.


And trilloch is from monster manual 3 and is not an undead, so there is an exemple of non undead profiting from negative energy.

There're also entropic creatures, nabassu demons, and the Xeg-yi. One of the things all of these creatures have in common is that none of them are native to the material and they're all outsiders. They make up too extreme a corner case to be able to disprove the basic premise; negative energy is harmful to life.

It's the same kind of exception as waging a genocidal war against demons.

[Gildedragon]

Thing is Life is inimical to life moving along.
As to positive energy leaks: it might very well be harmful; a preponderance in dire creatures, disease becoming more common as medicines become less effective at killing pathogens, plagues of vermin, overpopulation...

[Kelb_Panthera]

Thing is Life is inimical to life moving along.
As to positive energy leaks: it might very well be harmful; a preponderance in dire creatures, disease becoming more common as medicines become less effective at killing pathogens, plagues of vermin, overpopulation...

The problem with this argument is that the energy isn't selective like that.

Disease becoming more prevalent is countered by people becoming more able to resist it with their bolstered life-force. Population increase would be just as prevalent in predatory species as prey species, countering the plagues of vermin, and to the best of my knowledge there's no link between dire animals and positive energy. They're more a matter of atavism; dire creatures being the evolutionary neighbors of dinosaurs (see the primeval prestige class's primeval form feature).

[Raven777]

Let's invite Ragnorra to the Prime, then we can reevaluate how nice Positive Energy really is :smalltongue:

[SciChronic]

Something to consider is that while positive energy keep you alive, it also prevent death, which is part of the natural cycle. Positive energy can upset the balance of life and death by keeping things alive for too long; just as negative energy can upset the balance by taking the living before their time.

Undead are in a perpetual dead state, while deathless and stuck a perpetual living state.

[Crake]

Similar thing with the whole undead thing. Sentient undead are most likely to be evil simply because everyone associates it with evil, if more people viewed undeath as a good thing then the trend would even out quickly. Same with mindless undead, if people didn't think it was evil then more people would use them for good.

While undead themselves might not be evil, the act of creating undead is (without any exception that I can find) an evil act, if either by casting an [Evil] spell, or partaking in some evil ritual. This is why, despite their actual alignment, undead will always show up on a detect evil spell.

Mindless undead are always evil by the way.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Let's invite Ragnorra to the Prime, then we can reevaluate how nice Positive Energy really is :smalltongue:That's not raw positive energy. It's corrupted positive energy. It's positive energy mixed with some other nebulous factor instilled by ragnorra. The latter is the cause of mutations and other unpleasantness. The positive energy is just a delivery mechanism.


Something to consider is that while positive energy keep you alive, it also prevent death, which is part of the natural cycle. Positive energy can upset the balance of life and death by keeping things alive for too long; just as negative energy can upset the balance by taking the living before their time.

Undead are in a perpetual dead state, while deathless and stuck a perpetual living state.Positive energy doesn't have any inherent ability to prevent death from old age. If it did then there should be some note in the description of the positive energy plane noting that mortal immigrants don't die of old age. Also note that those mortals in a minor positive dominant area are in no danger of exploding from positive energy overload.

Positive energy is only harmful to life in either extremely high doses or in extremely focused bursts.


While undead themselves might not be evil, the act of creating undead is (without any exception that I can find) an evil act, if either by casting an [Evil] spell, or partaking in some evil ritual. This is why, despite their actual alignment, undead will always show up on a detect evil spell.

Mindless undead are always evil by the way.

Actually, only evil undead show up on detect evil. The rare non-evil undead won't detect under the spell at all. There are also several instances of neutral mindless undead scattered about.

[SciChronic]

Positive energy doesn't have any inherent ability to prevent death from old age. If it did then there should be some note in the description of the positive energy plane noting that mortal immigrants don't die of old age. Also note that those mortals in a minor positive dominant area are in no danger of exploding from positive energy overload.


positive energy can be used to cure diseases, grow back limbs, and heal inuries that would be fatal to most. In the natural world, this is an insult to the natural order. Diseases help control the population to maintain balance. the healing of grievous wounds and regrowing of limbs acts in the complete opposite direction of survival of the fittest.

look at modern human society for example. We've clearly over populated, and the power of medicine keeping us alive much longer than we should is largely to blame. The human body was not designed to live longer than 40 years.

[Kelb_Panthera]

positive energy can be used to cure diseases, grow back limbs, and heal inuries that would be fatal to most. In the natural world, this is an insult to the natural order. Diseases help control the population to maintain balance. the healing of grievous wounds and regrowing of limbs acts in the complete opposite direction of survival of the fittest.

look at modern human society for example. We've clearly over populated, and the power of medicine keeping us alive much longer than we should is largely to blame. The human body was not designed to live longer than 40 years.

You're now moving into the territory of saying anything that is unnatural is evil.

I'm not going to dignify the idea that healing the sick and the crippled is evil by even trying to argue against it rationally. If charity is evil then, by all means, paint me evil.

[TuggyNE]

Positive energy doesn't have any inherent ability to prevent death from old age. If it did then there should be some note in the description of the positive energy plane noting that mortal immigrants don't die of old age.

They don't!

— they die of head asploding.


Actually, only evil undead show up on detect evil. The rare non-evil undead won't detect under the spell at all. There are also several instances of neutral mindless undead scattered about.

Yes, they do. The listings are for "evil creatures", "undead", "evil outsiders", "clerics of evil deities", and "evil magic item or spell", in those words.


plook at modern human society for example. We've clearly over populated, and the power of medicine keeping us alive much longer than we should is largely to blame. The human body was not designed to live longer than 40 years.

This seems likely to lead to unfortunate discussions, but a few notes: current food production is less efficient than it could theoretically be, and covers much less land than you might think (and much less land than is arable). Also, while average lifespans have indeed increased past 40-50 years, the average was a bit misleading, since it includes high infant mortality (sometimes north of 50%); the average is actually "average lifespan expectancy at birth". Those who made it past childhood generally lived 60-80 years; this was true historically even thousands of years ago. It's only the last century or two that have had the chance to almost eliminate infant mortality and switch our focus to comparatively small gains at the other end, pushing from 60 to 70 and from 80 to 90.

[zlefin]

This seems very straightforward and falls under known issues to me.
The system as a whole, is inconsistent and fully thought out. As a result, there's a bunch of oddities. How the dm interprets them will affect the setting as a result.
Whether or not negative energy should be "evil" and positive "good" for instance, and whether negative energy contributes something important, is more a matter of interpretation than RAW, since the RAW tends to be observably broken on issues like this when you look closely.
Since some of us are going to be going off different premises as we assess the issue, there's not likely to be agreement between the sides.

[Deepbluediver]

Just so we get the record straight, here was my original response and statement that kicked off this discussion.


People that argue undead are evil or there creation is evil or there existence is evil.
I don't care. Your wrong, racists

Lets try to not make this personal; if we start slinging insults the thread is gonna get locked. :smallyuk:

Morality in D&D, like anything else, is a set of rules in our gameworld that we can modify as we choose. Like gravity, or shrugging off attacks that would kill a normal person, it doesn't need to perfectly mirror our understanding of real-world stuff. I can declare any particular event or action I want IN THE GAME to be good or evil, and like any other rule you can accept it or fight it or try to work around it.

There is, from what I've read, a strong amount of material that suggests negative energy is harmful to life in a way that other energy isn't. And I haven't seen ANY evidence that suggests negative energy is good for life in any way.
A fire elemental can kill you, but we use fire for cooking and crafting and heating and light. Its a potentially dangerous element reaction with benefits if we can control it. A zombie could kill you, but there's nothing really you can do with it that isn't destructive. At the very least it seems like you are picking a riskier option than you need to.

Also, many undead are listed as "always evil". I admit that the books are often unclear or even contradictory, but it would seem to indicate that when negative energy comes into contact with an intelligence, it has a highly influential effect to make that mind more cruel and more destructive.


And if you're going to quote me, please make sure you quote all of the most important parts, like:

Personally, I don't think that creating or using negative energy is inherently evil. I do believe that it is EXCEEDINGLY RISKY, so if you are not careful, your good intentions can quickly go awry. And that's why most people have an aversion to it.
That and the corpses. Have you ever seen a rotting corpse? It's terrible.

Now that we have that out of the way...


Deepbluediver asked for an example of negative energy doing something to help living creature that positive energy doesn't do. The only such thing is keeping positive energy in check. Negative energy doesn't actively do anything to help living creature, but it's existence prevent horrible thing happening from a surplus of positive energy.

You appear to be stuck in the mindset that something has to actively do something for it be considered as having an effect. The point is that positive energy is dangerous if in surplus, the material plane is not in a situation of surplus of positive energy because it also contain negative energy that syphon that surplus off.

As you rightly pointed out, the material plane is composed of some combination of the elements of other planes (fire, water, air, earth, positive, and negative).

A living creature trapped on the positive energy plane does eventually die from over-exposure to positive energy, however, I see nothing to indicate that there is a sufficient quantity of positive energy in the material plane to cause this. Small amounts of positive energy heal living creatures, and as far as I am aware, this is what exists naturally on the material plane: small amounts of every element. So as far as I know, if you removed all the negative energy from the material plane, most creatures wouldn't spontaneously self-destruct. But just like the material plane does not have the characteristics of the planes of fire, or earth or air or water, neither does it have the same properties as the plane of positive energy.

You are apparently more well versed with the Manual of the Planes than I though, so perhaps you can find an example to help resolves this issue, but otherwise it seems like a null point. Without real evidence either way, I think it mostly comes down to opinion.

Is there any evidence that without negative energy to counter it there would be an overabundance of positive energy on the material plane?


But what happens when you use a cure spell and it cure more HP than you can have ? Cure spell don't grant temporary hit points, so any energy that would grant HP beyond the max must go somewhere else. I think it is not unreasonable to consider it dumped into the environment.
It's even worse when one consider thing like mass heal, there is no real limit to how much healing it provide, just how much healing it provide to any one creature. Whether you heal 20 creatures or just one you have expanding the same amount of positive energy, that energy must be going somewhere.

An interesting thought experiment, certainly, but as I said, small amounts of energy do not cause the explosive decay of life. Again, I'm treading on unfamiliar ground, so maybe you can correct me, but it would seem that whatever natural mechanism created the material plane in the first place, actively maintains the balance of elements. That's how we DON'T end up with ice ages or a world-wide desert.
And compared to the ratios in which energy exists in different planes, trying to fill up the material plane with positive energy from Cure and Heal spells would be like trying to empty the ocean with a thimble.


I didn't say healing someone was evil, I said it was bad for balance. The good/evil axis is problematic because it present itself as a cosmic axis AND a morality thing.
If we separate the morality from the cosmic balance aspect we end up with this result. Healing can be morally good or evil depending on the situation (Healing the sick = morally good, Healing a torture victim to keep them alive for further torture = morally bad)
From the cosmic balancing act an healing spell is cosmically evil if it isn't balanced by an equal amount of negative energy.

I admit that the D&D alignment system is at best, confusing, arbitrary and contradictory, and at worst completely bjorked. But please remember that it is a rule in the game world like any other. In a game, the Deities/DM determine what is good and evil, effectively, and while you can argue with them or choose not to follow a given dogma, it is still just a rule that doesn't need to match your real-life beliefs perfectly.

Within the context of the published D&D world, it would seem that negative energy is associated with, and drives creatures towards, evil. One of the best examples I can think of is the basic vampire. It's a living creatures, of any alignment, that once infected with negative energy, becomes "always evil". You may dislike it, but that's what the book says. As far as I know, the vast majority of free-willed undead are always or almost always evil. Non-free willed undead are probably not evil by themselves, but if freed from control, they usually act in ways that are not beneficial to life.

So, the evidence I see is that negative energy has a strong influential effect towards the behaviors that D&D labels "evil".


There is no amount of sword to the face that would make a living creature feel better, either. I don't see weapons being tagged with the [Evil] descriptor, though. :smalltongue:

No, but a surgeon might use a sharp blade to operate on some one. I believe they even mention a surgeon's kit in the description of the healing skill. I have yet to see any published evidence for a way in which negative energy is beneficial for life. I also haven't seen any published evidence that the material plane would be unable to host life without the presence of negative energy. (but again, see my point earlier on how I think there's not really sufficient evidence either way)
What I DO know is that positive-energy based spells heal and restore life, and negative-energy based spells hurt and kill.



To summarize my position, I do not think that objects, or energy, can be inherently evil. Good, evil, and morality are products of an intelligent mind (including, probably, intelligent weapons and the like, though they might be a special category). I do believe, however, that there is sufficient evidence to indicate the negative energy is not like other elemental energies. There are special qualities that make it very difficult to use in a way that promotes life. Hence the reason I refer to it as the anti-life energy (not evil), and using it is tricky at best.

Imagine a situation, something like you need to clear out a hornet's nest from a tree. Most people would go to the store and get a can of Bug-B-Gone to do the job right. Using negative energy is like grabbing your uncle Ralph's home-made flame thrower and using that instead.
And saying that it's easier than trying to find another way strikes me as very close to the definition of evil: doing whatever is most expedient, and damn the consequences. Taking the time or effort to do things in a manner less risky or more difficult is a sentiment that I think most people would associate with good more than evil.

When you think about negative energy, the attitude that I usually take is that it's not an acceptable risk, and that's what makes it's use lean toward the deep end of the alignment pool.

[Kelb_Panthera]

They don't!

— they die of head asploding.Only if they stray into the major positive dominant areas. In a minor positive dominant area, an area so suffused with positive energy that you gain fast healing 2, you're completely safe from that particular affect. There's even mention of planar travelers having set up a hospice in such areas for wounded plane-hoppers.

There's no indication that even this level of positive energy exposure is, in any way, harmful and there's no mention at all of it changeing or suspending the aging process. Creatures there will still die of old age when they reach the maximum age they rolled as the crossed into the venerable age category.




Yes, they do. The listings are for "evil creatures", "undead", "evil outsiders", "clerics of evil deities", and "evil magic item or spell", in those words.My copy of the PHB says "evil undead" on that table.




This seems likely to lead to unfortunate discussions, but a few notes: current food production is less efficient than it could theoretically be, and covers much less land than you might think (and much less land than is arable). Also, while average lifespans have indeed increased past 40-50 years, the average was a bit misleading, since it includes high infant mortality (sometimes north of 50%); the average is actually "average lifespan expectancy at birth". Those who made it past childhood generally lived 60-80 years; this was true historically even thousands of years ago. It's only the last century or two that have had the chance to almost eliminate infant mortality and switch our focus to comparatively small gains at the other end, pushing from 60 to 70 and from 80 to 90.

These are interesting factoids. (I can't cut large swaths of text easily. Stupid wii.)

[Kane0]

I find negative energy to be a lot like electricity.

Living things operate on positive energy, thats our fuel of sorts. In exactly the same way, undead use negative energy and robots use electricity. Using any of those power sources for the wrong recipient is usually harmful. If the living were powered by negative energy, the dead by electricity and constructs by positive energy we would have exactly the same problem.

The thing is that in this case living things make up the vast majority and so positive energy is seen as largely good (and too much of a good thing can be a bad thing) where negative energy and electricity is seen as harmful outside of certain applications.

If people were to sit down and experiment they would eventually find a use for negative energy just like we have for electricity, but exposure to it would still be as bad as us getting shocked. However people have magic so they have no reason to do that, since all we have achieved with electricity can be achieved with magic.

Edit: And so I don't see Positive and Negative Energy any more good or evil than electricity or even fire for that matter. It's how it's used that matters. And we all know alignment becomes more and more broken the more and more you look at it.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I find negative energy to be a lot like electricity.

Living things operate on positive energy, thats our fuel of sorts. In exactly the same way, undead use negative energy and robots use electricity. Using any of those power sources for the wrong recipient is usually harmful. If the living were powered by negative energy, the dead by electricity and constructs by positive energy we would have exactly the same problem.

The thing is that in this case living things make up the vast majority and so positive energy is seen as largely good (and too much of a good thing can be a bad thing) where negative energy and electricity is seen as harmful outside of certain applications.

If people were to sit down and experiment they would eventually find a use for negative energy just like we have for electricity, but exposure to it would still be as bad as us getting shocked. However people have magic so they have no reason to do that, since all we have achieved with electricity can be achieved with magic.

The most glaring problem with this analogy is that the human body, and virtually every other animal body, -does- use electricity as a major component of what makes them function (at least in real life they do.)

Another noteable flaw is that only the kind of focused application that a xag-ya is capable of will harm a construct with positive energy. You could rain positive and negative energy on a construct all day and it would barely notice.

Finally, there is -no- application of negative energy that isn't harmful. Most times, in the case of attack and debuff spells that use it, that harm is focused entirely on a specific target and is morally dependent on why it's being used on that particular target. In the case of the creation of undead, however, the application is harmful to life in general and, for that reason, is never morally acceptable.

To use the electricity comparison, it's like the difference between hitting someone with a tazer Vs building a tesla coil with no shielding and rolling it around while it's turned on. In the former case, whether it's a problem or not depends on who you tazed, but in the latter it's just randomly firing arcs of electricity into whatever happens to be close by and there's nothing you can do to stop it short of turning it off.

[TuggyNE]

Only if they stray into the major positive dominant areas. In a minor positive dominant area, an area so suffused with positive energy that you gain fast healing 2, you're completely safe from that particular affect. There's even mention of planar travelers having set up a hospice in such areas for wounded plane-hoppers.

Isn't almost all of the PEP major positive, though?

Other than that, I don't really disagree, I was merely pointing out a reason they might have left that out. :smalltongue:


My copy of the PHB says "evil undead" on that table.

Hmm. It doesn't show up in the errata one way or another (from what I can tell), but it shows up as "undead" only in the Wizards.com SRD RTF document.

[zlefin]

kelb, you're only using your interpretation of the effects of negative energy, and the effects emphasized by certain writers of certain books. and overall this takes place in a world with rules that are known and proven to have serious gaping flaws in them; which means even those listed rules tend to not work when you really look at them.

[Kelb_Panthera]

kelb, you're only using your interpretation of the effects of negative energy, and the effects emphasized by certain writers of certain books. and overall this takes place in a world with rules that are known and proven to have serious gaping flaws in them; which means even those listed rules tend to not work when you really look at them.

So my arguments are invalid because they rely on RAW and logic instead of "undead are icky and classically evil"? :smallconfused:

Gotta say; that's a new one.

[Kane0]

I'm not a fancy debater sorry, but i'll do my best.


The most glaring problem with this analogy is that the human body, and virtually every other animal body, -does- use electricity as a major component of what makes them function (at least in real life they do.)

True, though I was trying to make a D&D comparison. Obviously us real folk don't run on positive energy, and we don't know how undead actually function because we haven't got it right yet. We tried electricity too, but Frankenstein didn't get too far doing that.



Another noteable flaw is that only the kind of focused application that a xag-ya is capable of will harm a construct with positive energy. You could rain positive and negative energy on a construct all day and it would barely notice.

I'm not familiar with the Zag-ya sorry, but it seems to be one of those edge cases D&D us riddled with. And true again, constructs aren't affected by positive or negative energy, largely i suspect because they are treated as inorganic material and thus not subject to things that only effect organic matter.



Finally, there is -no- application of negative energy that isn't harmful. Most times, in the case of attack and debuff spells that use it, that harm is focused entirely on a specific target and is morally dependent on why it's being used on that particular target. In the case of the creation of undead, however, the application is harmful to life in general and, for that reason, is never morally acceptable.

You can heal undead with it. From their point of view thats pretty good. My point was that you wouldn't expect a good outcome if you electrocute someone, and there isn't a way I know of that helps them out in D&D. Negative energy is the thematic opposite of positive energy and creatures that run on one aren't designed to react in a good way with the other, like opposing elementals and aligned outsiders and whatnot.
Also I don't see how creation of undead in itself is harmful to life. You are animating an empty body with negative energy or in the case of necropolitans or liches converting your body from running on positive energy to running on negative energy. What the undead does after creation is moral blood on your hands as they are your responsibility much the same as frankenstein's monster was or a robot that goes on a killing spree is. Unfortunately it isn't that cut and dry because D&D is good at making things come off as irreparably evil by default, minimizing tough moral decisions placed on DMs and players (orc infants for example).

Needless to say I am personally pro-undead, especially against the 'undead are evil' and 'negative energy is wrong' stereotypes.
Of course it is still dangerous and misunderstood, i won't argue against that.

Edit: Too busy writing a reponse, missed three replies -.-

[Kane0]

So my arguments are invalid because they rely on RAW and logic instead of "undead are icky and classically evil"? :smallconfused:

Gotta say; that's a new one.

You are using more logic than the writers did :smallamused:

[Thrudd]

This post was originally from the "can undead be good" thread, which also resulted in a discussion on the topic of the nature of positive and negative energy, etc.

The normal and balanced amount of negative energy in the world is reflected by aging and dying, entropy in general. The normal amount of positive energy is responsible for conceiving and growing. The natural emotions of love and fear, positive and negative respecitvely. This is why druids are always neutral (used to be only true neutral, no good or evil or lawful or chaotic). Their magic and their job comes from maintaining the balance of the material world, which must not have too much positive or negative energy. They are sustained by being in perfect balance in all material elements, not by drawing power from another plane or energy source. A spreading region of heavenly radiance that heals everyone who touches it and leaves people enlightened and immune to injury would be just as much a threat to the natural order of the material world as would be a negative zone where the dead rise and all plant life whithers. Normally we don't write campaigns about that sort of thing (a spreading zone of goodness and light), because it isn't really threatening in the immiediate sense. Even if it means the destruction of material existence as we know it, a lot of people wouldn't mind it. Rising and out of control evil and negative energy are the type of threat that is more obvious and adventures tend to address.
By my D&D cosmology, the very existence of undead corresponds to an unnatural imbalance in energy. A corruption that consumes a lifeform until it is an embodiment of persistent death and entropy; hence the feeding on flesh, or consuming souls, draining life-energy, and a persistent aura of fear etc. that is the halmark of undead creatures. A person who willingly became that, even with good intentions of gaining power and immortality for the sake of others, would inevitably be twisted into "evil". It is like taking the One Ring and trying to use it for good. The Ring itself is evil, anything you try to do with it will turn to ruin, whatever your intentions.
Of course, campaign worlds may vary. Some people are fine with a blatant black and white world, where it all boils down to a supernatural "good" force combating an "evil" force, and they don't give it any more thought than that. It is obvious in this case that death/negative is evil and life/positive is good, and we are on the side of good (or evil, if the players like to be contrary). Others prefer a world with no inherent morality defined for the characters. There is no supernatural basis for good and evil, they are defined only by people's choices relative to eachother and their environment, and supernatural elements are completely neutral, it is all in how they are used. I like a little bit of a mix of the two. I don't want a morally preachy or simplistic game, but I don't really enjoy running or playing in amoral/evil campaigns either, where everyone is plotting against eachother. There is a definite overall "good" to be acheived, but the players should have some moral quandries and difficult decisions to make throughout. So my world has deities and supernatural forces that, for all intents and purposes, are good and evil, since some appear to defend life and others seek to destroy the natural order. If we were to really delve into the workings of the cosmos and see it all from a detached and enlightened viewpoint, it could be argued that both are necessary and natural parts of a functioning system, there is really no such thing as "alignment", only perception and variances which are necessary for the appearance of forms and ultimately material existence, all existence is predicated on the fluctuating and interaction of these forces. Maybe the Grand Master of Flowers (you old school folks know what I'm talking about) could have this discussion with the players when they seek him out on his secluded mountain top wanting to know the secrets of the universe. But rarely is a D&D game about becoming enlightened, it is about adventuring and fighting. So from the players' and characters' perspective, there is good and evil, and in general I want them to be more on the "good" side, which is defending their society or their world in general from forces that would break it. Perhaps in cosmological terms it is futile to resist change, and a world full of negative energy will inevitably swing back to the positive...but unless they are at epic/god level themselves, I don't think the characters would be ready or willing to accept that...

[zlefin]

your arguments are invalid because they are invalid, and you have no respect for others nor ability to debate properly, nor ability to understand the effects of sourcing. I shan't bother explaining things to a fool who can't understand them.
To the rest of you: it's easy to make systems which fit the raw there is and have good uses of negative energy.

[Elderand]

way too much stuff to quote

Most of the discussion about the nature of the planes and negative energy/positive energy cannot be backed by rules since the dev largely stopped thinking beyond "undead evil" and "hitting stuff with a sword is just as good as stopping time". Whoefully shortsighted.

However there are things that can be gleened from the fluff if not the crunch.

From manual of the planes pg 80


Worse, it (the negative energy plane) is a needy, greedy plane, sucking the life out anything that is vulnerable.

That seems to indicate that negative energy tend to suck out energy, be it heat (undead are often described as radiating (sic) cold, or life (negative energy spell tend to make you weaker or make yu waste away.

Clearly negative energy is not present in equal amount into the material plane as positive energy, if it was nothing would be able to live and grow. However a world devoid of it would be a world whitout decay, a part of the natural cycle.

Interestingly, the precursor to negative energy can be found into the immortal set for basic dnd (the exact terminology of earlier edition escape me at the moment) and was defined as being entropy.

I do believe that it was also hinted at one point (in which book or even which edition I am unsure) that portals to the planes could be found at points of great concentration of their elements. Portals to the plane of water deep in the oceans, portal to fire inside volcanoes,....

I would also say that while negative energy pushes undead toward evil, it is moral evil. Not cosmic evil. Negative energy is greedy and life sucking which is rightly seen as evil by creature whose power source is it's opposite. But it is not cosmic evil unless it tips the balance. Of course that is merely a matter of dm preferences and such.

I do agree that using undeads might be too much trouble to be worth it but not all societies have to work the same way. I believe a society in Eberron actualy is quite happy with it's undeads.

Personaly I find alignement in general to be useless and often turn into a simple tag attached to thing player can fight whitout remorse.

My real problem with alignement is actually with good, and by association, evil. On a moral level it should be more than just a tag attached to a creature to justify the murdering and taking of it's stuff for player. And on a cosmic level I would rather see it defined in other terms than good and evil.

If I HAD to have an "alignement" system it would actually work something like this.

First, it would not be concerned with morality in any way shape or form. It would merely be a set of cosmic principles. Order and chaos, creation and destruction as it's axis. And even using the term axis is wrong, it would not be a series of points on a graph.

Chaotic cration would give rise to everything at random while chaotic destruction would destroy everything at random. These two side of chaos ensuring the existance of everything but whitout any sort of continuity. Then order stabilise thing, giving everything a chance to exist for a period of time fitting for each thing.

Chaos would be the primal source of existance but also the uncontrolable death and destruction that make life interesting. If you knew exactly when everything was going to end (ordered destruction) there would be no point to things like hope.

Outsiders would be able to be aligned with each of the principles whithin a certain measure (but never completely for a mix is needed for existance). But the morality of their action would not be defined by their alignement. An angel and a devil could both have the exact same alignement in term of cosmic principle but decide to use completely different method to gain power. They would gather power from belief. An angel would use the carrot, kindness to be admired and loved. While the devil would use the stick, fear and pain to be hated. And both would be aligned toward order. And neither toward either creation or destruction because both have a vested interest into keeping the cycle going for more people to be born and believe in them. (This is an exemple and is not meant to reflect perfectly the nature of angels and devils in dnd)

I'm rambling, the point is that I think the game would benefit from leaving morality completely outside of the rules and in the realm of pure roleplay.

[TheIronGolem]

Finally, there is -no- application of negative energy that isn't harmful.

There is at least one. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/falseLife.htm)

[Serin]

I find negative energy to be a lot like electricity.

Living things operate on positive energy, thats our fuel of sorts. In exactly the same way, undead use negative energy and robots use electricity. Using any of those power sources for the wrong recipient is usually harmful. If the living were powered by negative energy, the dead by electricity and constructs by positive energy we would have exactly the same problem.


For what its worth; I feel like this is on the right track, just not all the way there.

In my opinion, Positive energy and Negative Energy are more akin to Matter and Anti-Matter. Positive energy produces and promotes "life as we know it." Specifically referring to living organisms. Negative energy produces and promotes a different sort of "life" that we call undeath.

While there are many types of undead which procreate via infectious mechanism such as vampires, there are spontaneously created undead and beings that rely on negative energy. My primary example would be any creature native to the negative energy plane or possibly some creatures that exist on the shadow plane. Even if you don't accept that this is true, the original vampire or ghoul still had to originate somewhere before it could reproduce. Things like Revenants arise spontaneously all the time.

In the same manner that Earth is made of matter, it is theorized that you could make a world quite similiar to earth that is made of anti-matter. Of course these two worlds could not exist in close proximity to each other as their opposing natures would result in annihilation.

Therefore, I suggest that just as you have a world where most life functions on positive energy you could possibly have a world where most life functions on negative energy. There are some minor difficulties with this, such as some undead having feeding requirements. However the majority of those creatures will never perish or expire by not meeting those requirements. They may go insane or act even more addict like, but they don't cease to exist. (as per the rules on pages 8 and 9 of Libris Mortis)

From either side of the line, the other could be viewed as evil and detrimental to one's existence. This idea by its own virtue requires the definition of evil as "this is bad for me and thus it is evil."

That would mean that utilizing negative energy is a precarious position for individuals grounded in positive energy. It is inherently bad for you but if harnessed it could be put to use for either constructive or destructive ends. Just like nuclear energy it can easily kill even if harnessing it properly might produce wonderful things.

Under a view such as this positive and negative energy are both neutral from a objective cosmological point of view. IF you are going to look at it from a subjective position then it depends which position you take.

From the perspective of a sentient undead positive energy is evil as it is dangerous to you and the majority of those who dwell on it wish to harm or eradicate you. Negative energy is good because it protects you.

From the perspective of sentient humanoids negative energy is evil as it is dangerous to you and the majority of those who dwell on it wish to harm or eradicate you. Positive energy is good because it protects you.

It seems to me that its rather obvious to me that these things are neutral until you assume a specific vantage point. Of course this is coming from my own vantage point, as someone who rather enjoys playing undead characters.

*Edit* Spelling

[Seharvepernfan]

It would make so much more sense if "negative" energy was simply the lack of positive energy, like how cold is the absence of heat and darkness is the absence of light; not a thing in itself. But, in D&D, cold is a thing, darkness is a thing, and so is negative energy.

:smallannoyed:

In my homebrew, I do it the "sensible" way, where negative energy is the taking-away of positive energy, so when somebody casts inflict wounds, they're simply drawing away your positive energy. The only problem I have is trying to decide how undead are animated.

[Kane0]

For what its worth; I feel like this is on the right track, just not all the way there.

-Snippy-


You word it better than I. This is very close to my viewpoint, yes.


The only problem I have is trying to decide how undead are animated.

Perhaps you create undead by continuing to draw away positive energy until there is a sort of 'black hole', forcing the creature back into a semblance of life in order to restore their positive energy content to be above negatives, or at least equalized back to 0 in order to be dead again. This woudl also explain why most are mindless and the ones that are intelligent would be largely malicious in nature.

So alive = having positive energy, dead is being positive/negative neutral and being undead means you are 'in debt', so you need to get some positive energy to equalise. Of course if you have no means of acquiring positive energy in order to do you things become quite maddening, so not many undead are amicable after any period of time.

[Seharvepernfan]

But what would be "powering" them?

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'm not a fancy debater sorry, but i'll do my best.Eh. I never went to college and was a slacker in high-school. I'm in the same boat.




True, though I was trying to make a D&D comparison. Obviously us real folk don't run on positive energy, and we don't know how undead actually function because we haven't got it right yet. We tried electricity too, but Frankenstein didn't get too far doing that.Heh. :smallamused:



I'm not familiar with the Zag-ya sorry, but it seems to be one of those edge cases D&D us riddled with. And true again, constructs aren't affected by positive or negative energy, largely i suspect because they are treated as inorganic material and thus not subject to things that only effect organic matter.Exactly right. The xag-ya is an energon made up entirely of positive energy. It -can- cause harm by focusing positive energy into a target upon closer review, they do damage with an incorporeal touch attack during which they -withhold- their positive energy. It seems I was mistaken and that the -only- way for unmodified positive energy to do harm is the major positive-dominant trait of the bulk of the positive energy plane.



You can heal undead with it. From their point of view thats pretty good. My point was that you wouldn't expect a good outcome if you electrocute someone, and there isn't a way I know of that helps them out in D&D. Negative energy is the thematic opposite of positive energy and creatures that run on one aren't designed to react in a good way with the other, like opposing elementals and aligned outsiders and whatnot.Electrocuting a foe or killing him with an inflict spell carries the exact same moral weight as both are simply the result of channeling the energy into the target with destructive intent. Once the spell is over, the energy is gone and no more will come into the world to do unintentional harm.

Also I don't see how creation of undead in itself is harmful to life. You are animating an empty body with negative energy or in the case of necropolitans or liches converting your body from running on positive energy to running on negative energy. What the undead does after creation is moral blood on your hands as they are your responsibility much the same as frankenstein's monster was or a robot that goes on a killing spree is. Unfortunately it isn't that cut and dry because D&D is good at making things come off as irreparably evil by default, minimizing tough moral decisions placed on DMs and players (orc infants for example).Actually, the animator of sentient undead very much isn't responsible for what they do if he's not in direct, magical control of that creature. The problem is, as I've already shown, that undead constantly radiate negative energy.

It's the same as if you were to take a big bucket of poison or a powdered radio-isotope and chucked them into a towns well. You'd be responsible for all the harm caused by that poison because you threw it in the well. In this metaphor the poison is the negative energy being radiated by the undead, not the undead itself, and the whole world is the town drawing from that well.


Needless to say I am personally pro-undead, especially against the 'undead are evil' and 'negative energy is wrong' stereotypes.Just to reiterate, mostly because people keep seeming to mistake my meaning, I'm not saying undead are evil or negative energy is wrong. What I'm saying is that creating a mobile well-spring of constantly flowing harm to life is evil.

Of course it is still dangerous and misunderstood, i won't argue against that.
There is no misunderstanding. Negative energy is harmful, and only harmful to living creatures. There are morally neutral ways it can be used, just like any of the other types of energy, but setting up a mobile emitter that -will- harm everyone near it, no matter how little harm it actually does, is nothing but uncontionably irresponsible; so much so that it is, in fact, evil.

There is at least one. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/falseLife.htm)

That's not necessarily a negative energy effect. Necromancy deals with the manipulation of "death, unlife, and life force." "Unlife" is probably negative energy. However, "life-force" is very likely positive energy and "death" could refer to the removal of those energies rather than an influx of the opposite. That said, I can't say with certainty that the spell doesn't use negative energy to create some kind of buffer for the caster's life force. This may be a (incredibly rare) exception, though it's certainly not unmodified negative energy at work.

[Saidoro]

The most glaring problem with this analogy is that the human body, and virtually every other animal body, -does- use electricity as a major component of what makes them function (at least in real life they do.)
What makes you so certain that the D&D human's body doesn't make use of negative energy? We have evidence that negative and positive energy create force when they collide, after all, why couldn't a fantasy human be designed to use separated stores of positive and negative energy the same way real ones do sugar or fat? They could just be more poorly adjusted to absorbing negative energy than positive because the presence of the sun (Proven harmful to many undead) forced them to grow accustomed to large infusions of the latter. It makes at least as much sense as the "People are big positive energy ballons" theory that most people seem to hold, anyway.

[SiuiS]

Thread for the continuation of the debate in this thread

Things that tick us off (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=287697)

Deepbluediver asked for an exemple of negative energy doing something to help living creature that positive energy doesn't do. The only such thing is keeping positive energy in check. Negative energy doesn't actievly do anything to help living creature, but it's existance prevent horrible thing happening from a surplus of positive energy.

There is actually some further stuf making positive energy out to be better; incarnum. Soulstuff is fluffed to be positive-based. Matter, bein neutral and mostly inert (perhaps 51-55% positive?) suffers under a surplus but negative energy can destroy the core of sentient existence through negation, while positive energy doesn't do jack all to a soul.



But what happens when you use a cure spell and it cure more HP than you can have ? Cure spell don't grant temporary hit points, so any energy that would grant HP beyond the max must go somewhere else. I think it is not unreasonable to consider it dumped into the environement.
It's even worsee when one consider thing like mass heal, there is no real limit to how much healing it provide, just how much healing it provide to any one creature. Whether you heal 20 creatures or just one you have expanding the same amount of positive energy, that energy must be going somewhere.


Positive and negative energy, until you get so far along as to cause gross tissue alteration, is easier to catalogue as realigning the humors than anything to do with modern scientific applications of "energy". So there's an immediate disconnect for people who just don't realize their bias.

Coupled with the designers having like, three ideas about what it should mean...
Yeah.



I didn't say healing someone was evil, I said it was bad for balance. The good/evil axis is problematic because it present itself as a cosmic axis AND a morality thing.
If we separate the morality from the cosmic balance aspect we end up with this result. Healing can be moraly good or evil depending on the situation (Healing the sick = moraly good, Healing a torture victim to keep them alive for further torture = moraly bad)
From the cosmic balancing act an healing spell is cosmicly evil if it isn't balanced by an equal amount of negative energy.

Mm. D&D 3.X has marhematical morality. It's important to note that healin someone is ALWAYS a good act (goodness +2), but the net result of maintainin a torture victim is evil because torture (Evil +5, good -2) outweighs the healing (good +2).

Is this a working system? Define working. It is understandable, potentially counterintuitive, and utterly objective to the point of absurdity sometimes. It's easy for one person to discuss net result and another gross, and get into an argument. Best to be very clear, open minded and forgiving.


Fluff from a necromancer's studies in a game, spurred by our archivist (played by a nonsavvy gamer) arguing positive = divine and negative = evil (not touching divine cannot be evil, though)


"On energies;

The human soul (in truth, the soul of all livin things) is a construct of ephemerality almost beyond dissection. Almost! What we as a body have learned is interesting and leads to heuristic understanding.

The soul is a discrete construct of magic, positivity and an imprint – the self. Take a man, Vognar the terrible. Vognar'a soul consists of incarnate magic of a positive vibration, imprinted with his personality. This is somewhat troubling because it means clearly that, despite our understandings, a soul is not a person. The person is a transient state the soul bears for a moment before discarding. A soul, in it's rightful place, eventually loses this imprint and becomes purely a thing of energy. For sake of this paper, then, we will define the soul as the incarnum construct bearing a personal imprint, and the soul stuff divested of personhood shall be called incarnum, soul stuff, etc. as required.

((NOTE that despite losing personality, incarnum bears memory still. This is ostensibly the force behind the Empyreal economies and metabolism, with each vibrational sphere achieving charge through the psychic energies of the souls it absorbs, see Du Vlack's theories of Spherical Orientations))

Now, the soul is, itself, positively charged construct. How then, does negative energy and positive energy affect it? Positive, almost no effect at all. Akin to dropping water into vaster, greater stores of water, it is still ultimately unchanged. With proper science, that soul can even be retrieved.

Negative energy however, can have a direct and deleterious effect; this is the basis of necromantic assault. The soul emanates the body as it's energies disperse into the solid states, in infinite iterative reformation, and necromantic magics such as curses and enervation alter the souls ability to emanate – that is, create blockages in the flow of soul-to-body. This is touched on further in other papers, but suffice that the majority of mortal magics cannot strike deeper without first removing the soul. Hence, this bond between soul and body is what we will deal with.

I death! A state well known and studied by my peers and great scholars the world over. There are those animate dead who exist as automatons, zombies and the like. They are interesting in other ways mechanical, but not relevant here. The sentient dead, however, those who maintain the soul, are of interest. The personality and Animacy are maintained, yet the soul is positively charged and the body now negative. How does this work?

Near as I can tell, through studies of both my own temporary transformation, and that of Igan into a vampire's spawn, is that the process of undeath is like a curse and modifies the bond between body and soul. The magics which create the monster invert the energy of the soul, twisting it in a fashion, to provide for the negative-infused body. It is a parasitic thing, where the form traps the soul within ambit of the corpse, by keeping the corpse "alive" enough to maintain the sympathetic bonds, and is almost circular in its logic. It is not perfect however.

Because the soul is radiating positive energy, and the body subsists on negative, there is inefficiency. Undead creatures drain vitality to make up this discrepancy, as by nature of negativity and the void of their originate plane, they are as vacuums of life. The body cannot generate sufficient negative energy from its environment, or from its self, and so must acquire some by parasitism. This also causes the change in personality and alignment as the exterior orbit of the soul, the personality, receives disjointed and altered datum as it connects to the mind. The bond between body and soul is where personality manifests in the physical; tampering with such, necromanticly, causes a literal alignment shift – the person's parts are unaligned and their workings strained.

As for alignment itself, it is neither negative nor positive in the energetic sense. An evil soul is still positively aligned, and the hells are still positively aligned – they benefit from dispersed incarnum as much as any plane. One must assume either that the negative energy plane is a unique anomaly in the spheres, or that there is an entire vibrational level of negative realities we have not yet found. There may be correlation between negative energy and negative acts, but the mechanisms are hidden from us; there is no discernible, deducible pattern. Merely inductively arrived at conclusions by way of association. Until such time as one achieves immortality, test subjects, test conditions and increased cognitive and perceptive faculties, we may never have a clear, reasoned explanation."

Prompted by
• incarnum being of the soul
• — Energy being related to undeath
• — energy being unrelated to alignment
• undead being evil
• final destination of petitioners
• Necromancer's temporary stint as a ghost, before taking the Soul Shaper feat and entering into incarnate/soulcaster.

Alignment and positive energy are a lot more fun when you deliver them with the same arrogant surety as an alchemist of old would talk of phlogiston or the effects of purified mercury imbibed on the right geomantic plate. :smallbiggrin:

[Thrudd]

You word it better than I. This is very close to my viewpoint, yes.



Perhaps you create undead by continuing to draw away positive energy until there is a sort of 'black hole', forcing the creature back into a semblance of life in order to restore their positive energy content to be above negatives, or at least equalized back to 0 in order to be dead again. This woudl also explain why most are mindless and the ones that are intelligent would be largely malicious in nature.

So alive = having positive energy, dead is being positive/negative neutral and being undead means you are 'in debt', so you need to get some positive energy to equalise. Of course if you have no means of acquiring positive energy in order to do you things become quite maddening, so not many undead are amicable after any period of time.

The question I have would be, if negative energy is just the loss and absence of positive energy (or just "energy", since calling it positive implies there is a negative), how would it be possible to go into a "debt" of energy to create an undead condition? Maybe if you describe life energy of a being like a gas in a confined space, and negative energy activity as a sort of force that actively drains the gas through holes in the vessel, causing an area of low pressure within that will have the effect of sucking in energy from he surrounding environment to fill the vaccuum. However, if undead is a condition caused by an external force constantly draining the life energy from a body or area, then simply adding more energy to it will not stop the external force. Cure spells should not damage undead, it should either make them stronger or have no effect at all, and turn/rebuke undead shouldn't work. If anything, creating a burst of light/energy should draw in undead like moths to a flame due to their insatiable hunger for life energy. We would need to describe cure and turning undead and other related holy cleric spells as something other than "positive energy". To harm undead, you would need to dispel or shut off access to the "sucking" force that surrounds them. That might work for turning and some other effects, but it doesn't work with cures. Maybe if you said that a physical injury creates a parallel metaphysical life-energy drain and cure turns off the drain on the metaphysical level, supernaturally stemming the physical injury. This is also why the reverse "harm" spells would operate as "negative" energy, because they replicate the metaphysical effect of a physical injury, which then causes actual bodily harm. The difference in the effect of a harm spell and animate dead, or the effects which create vampires and wights, etc, is one of scale and persistence of the draining force. To go along with all this, of course, you'd need to address exactly how a human being operates metaphysically, the nature of the soul/siprit, to explain how it is possible for incorporeal undead to exist as well as animated corpses and vampires. Overall, it looks like this modeal could work quite well at first glance.
On the other hand, another real-world metaphor that can describe the relationship is matter and antimatter, as was mentioned before. Antimatter is not just the absence of matter, it is a type of matter which is counteractive and destructive to conventional matter when the two meet. I think that type of relationship describes more simply the means by which undead and energy draining creatures would exist as described in conventional D&D, and why positive energy spells and abilities damage them and heal living beings. Undead are essentially "possessed" by negative energy, an intrusion from the negative material plane. On the material plane, positive and negative energy are built into the system of matter where they naturally balance eachother. An intrusion into the material by "pure" positive or negative energy has supernatural effects. Undead turn away from a source of supernatural positive energy because it will destroy them when they come in contact with it, the source that is driving them and sustaining them will be annihilated like anti-matter and matter.

[rexx1888]

once again, lots of awesome interesting talk, but i think common sense can still help on the whole "raising undead is always an evil act" thing.

lets assume for a moment your a normal person, doing normal backyard things. im pretty sure we can all relate to this. Now, while in the backyard, you look over the fence into your neighbors yard, and you see your neighbor playing with a corpse by attaching puppet strings to it. sure, we just took a dive off Surreal Cliffs but the point stands, if you see that, you are going to call the cops, because that person is not only crazy but likely a psychopath incapable of feeling empathy and if you stay near him too long you're likely to end up doing the breathless mumbo followed by a bit of the puppefied Hoola, if you get my drift.

lets apply a similiar scenario to DnD land. You are in a Good society, where good is the pervading sense of life. Thats our society. That means psychos are NOT OK, and people that behave that way are NOT OK. More importantly, Good societies respect their dead, which is why its NOT OK to be a psycho. Thus, seeing your neighbor raise undead will indicate to you that they are evil, and by extension they have learnt that its NOT OK to play with dead people and chosen to ignore it. There is no situation where it is. If you need a workforce, get golems, no one is ever going to say "yeah sure you can raise my grandma to plow our fields". Its NOT OK. Sure, it might be OK in an Evil society, because in an Evil society sociopaths ARE OK, but they ARE NOT OK in Good societies.

ergo, raising the bloody things is NOT OK. taking control is fine. It makes sense that its fine, because you dont have to be a sociopath to use a hammer. You do have to be a sociopath to look at a persons dead grandma and make it into a hammer. See the difference. One uses the tools at hand(and presumably dismantles them when they dont need them anymore) and the other turns people they knew into tools :\ Also, i would argue that if you are trying to say turning corpses into hammers is OK then maybe you should go outside, because you seem to be a little disconnected from the world at large :\

**edit grammar fix

[Kelb_Panthera]

once again, lots of awesome interesting talk, but i think common sense can still help on the whole "raising undead is always an evil act" thing.

lets assume for a moment your a normal person, doing normal backyard things. im pretty sure we can all relate to this. Now, while in the backyard, you look over the fence into your neighbors yard, and you see your neighbor playing with a corpse by attaching puppet strings to it. sure, we just took a dive off Surreal Cliffs but the point stands, if you see that, you are going to call the cops, because that person is not only crazy but likely a psychopath incapable of feeling empathy and if you stay near him too long you're likely to end up doing the breathless mumbo followed by a bit of the puppefied Hoola, if you get my drift.

lets apply a similiar scenario to DnD land. You are in a Good society, where good is the pervading sense of life. Thats our society. That means psychos are NOT OK, and people that behave that way are NOT OK. More importantly, Good societies respect their dead, which is why its NOT OK to be a psycho. Thus, seeing your neighbor raise undead will indicate to you that they are evil, and by extension they have learnt that its NOT OK to play with dead people and chosen to ignore it. There is no situation where it is. If you need a workforce, get golems, no one is ever going to say "yeah sure you can raise my grandma to plow our fields". Its NOT OK. Sure, it might be OK in an Evil society, because in an Evil society sociopaths ARE OK, but they ARE NOT OK in Good societies.

ergo, raising the bloody things is NOT OK. taking control is fine. It makes sense that its fine, because you dont have to be a sociopath to use a hammer. You do have to be a sociopath to look at a persons dead grandma and make it into a hammer. See the difference. One uses the tools at hand(and presumably dismantles them when they dont need them anymore) and the other turns people they knew into tools :\ Also, i would argue that if you are trying to say turning corpses into hammers is OK then maybe you should go outside, because you seem to be a little disconnected from the world at large :\

**edit grammar fix

This is a great example of subjective morality.....

Which is -not- what we're (or at least I'm) talking about.

The morality we're looking at here is the fictional absolute morality which is a rules construct within the game.

Cosmic good and evil don't care how your society has structured itself. They don't care what mortals or even the gods think is or isn't okay. They recognize certain behavioral patterns that are as clearly defined as such things can be without turning BoED and BoVD into sociology or philosophy textbooks.

Cosmic good doesn't care about moldering corpses and fairly large swaths of most mortal societies don't either. Once the soul is out of there the flesh is just so much meat. You can build a flesh golem or a really life-like effigy and neither cosmic good or evil will even notice.

Hell, you can eat the corpse without pinging evil as long as the guy wasn't killed specifically to be dinner.

Animating undead isn't evil because it's disrespectful to the deceased or his survivors, it's evil because it's disrespectful to the very concept of life and causes direct, ongoing harm to life.

Nitpick: whatever society you live in, IRL, would probably qualify as LN rather than NG or even LG under D&D's absolute alignment system. After reaching a certain size or certain age, most governments shift greatly toward maintaining the status quo over doing what's best for the people. We just prefer to think of our societies as good and just.

[Cirrylius]

taking control is fine. It makes sense that its fine, because you dont have to be a sociopath to use a hammer. You do have to be a sociopath to look at a persons dead grandma and make it into a hammer. See the difference. One uses the tools at hand(and presumably dismantles them when they dont need them anymore) and the other turns people they knew into tools :\ Also, i would argue that if you are trying to say turning corpses into hammers is OK then maybe you should go outside, because you seem to be a little disconnected from the world at large :\

An important difference is it's not possible to turn a hammer into a servant/footsoldier/perpetual motion engine with a semiprecious stone and a middling-level spell. Maybe if the PHB had a spell for permanently animating a 1hd construct or elemental or something under your control, then the "you should be shocked that you consider corpses objects instead of ex-people" argument would have more weight.

[Raven777]

once again, lots of awesome interesting talk, but i think common sense can still help on the whole "raising undead is always an evil act" thing.

lets assume for a moment your a normal person, doing normal backyard things. im pretty sure we can all relate to this. Now, while in the backyard, you look over the fence into your neighbors yard, and you see your neighbor playing with a corpse by attaching puppet strings to it. sure, we just took a dive off Surreal Cliffs but the point stands, if you see that, you are going to call the cops, because that person is not only crazy but likely a psychopath incapable of feeling empathy and if you stay near him too long you're likely to end up doing the breathless mumbo followed by a bit of the puppefied Hoola, if you get my drift.

lets apply a similiar scenario to DnD land. You are in a Good society, where good is the pervading sense of life. Thats our society. That means psychos are NOT OK, and people that behave that way are NOT OK. More importantly, Good societies respect their dead, which is why its NOT OK to be a psycho. Thus, seeing your neighbor raise undead will indicate to you that they are evil, and by extension they have learnt that its NOT OK to play with dead people and chosen to ignore it. There is no situation where it is. If you need a workforce, get golems, no one is ever going to say "yeah sure you can raise my grandma to plow our fields". Its NOT OK. Sure, it might be OK in an Evil society, because in an Evil society sociopaths ARE OK, but they ARE NOT OK in Good societies.

ergo, raising the bloody things is NOT OK. taking control is fine. It makes sense that its fine, because you dont have to be a sociopath to use a hammer. You do have to be a sociopath to look at a persons dead grandma and make it into a hammer. See the difference. One uses the tools at hand(and presumably dismantles them when they dont need them anymore) and the other turns people they knew into tools :\ Also, i would argue that if you are trying to say turning corpses into hammers is OK then maybe you should go outside, because you seem to be a little disconnected from the world at large :\

**edit grammar fix

Let's use another undead as an exemple. Your neighbor is a vampire. He will exist forever. Experience all of history. Read every book. Watch every movie. Play every game. Learn every trade. He doesn't have to fear illness or accidents. He doesn't have to sleep, or eat, or drink. Contrary to belief, his senses aren't dulled at all by undeath. He gets a massive Perception bonus, after all. His senses are sharpened. He can see, smell, taste, hear, feel everything more acutely than you ever could.

He can even go into the sun (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/p/protective-penumbra) to help you assemble the barbecue you just bought.

All he needs to sustain himself is to drink a non life threatening amount of blood once every sixth day. A vampire's bite only does 1d4 Con damage, which heals naturally over 1d4 days. Vampires need to have at least 5 HD before being eligible for the template, and the time they can go between feedings before having to succeed at Will saving throws is one day per HD.

One day, he asks you if you would like to be a vampire too. It is not an offer he makes to everyone. This would obviously not be sustainable if everyone one got to be like him. Kant can go to hell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universalizability). But you can be like him if you desire.

Tell me it is a deal you wouldn't make. Tell me.

[SethoMarkus]

So, just throwing this out there regarding undead (which it seems is where this argument originated in the "things that tick us off" thread).

I had always viewed the creation of undead an evil act not because of the negative energy, but because of the nature of the necromancy. Aside from simply being a case of desecrating a corpse (always an evil act), the little tag at the end of the Raise Dead spell made me assume that the creation of undead somehow perverts the soul of the "victim."


SRD
A creature who has been turned into an undead creature or killed by a death effect can’t be raised by this spell. Constructs, elementals, outsiders, and undead creatures can’t be raised. The spell cannot bring back a creature that has died of old age.

So, although there are other valid reasons to debate whether negative energy is [evil] and positive energy is [good], in my opinion the act of creating undead is not evil because of the energies involved, but due to the nature of the act itself.

[Raven777]

Actually, that bit you quoted means that you need to destroy the undead before attempting the raise, not that you cannot raise the character at all.

Say you have someone's finger but the rest of them wanders around as a zombie, you need to destroy the zombie first before the Resurrection can work.

[TuggyNE]

Say you have someone's finger but the rest of them wanders around as a zombie, you need to destroy the zombie first before the Resurrection can work.

Note that if you have the zombie right there you can condense the destruction step in with the resurrection step.

[Gildedragon]

Funny thing: resurrect/reincarnate and then animate
Or reincarnate and then try to resurrect the body

[Raven777]

Resurrection doesn't destroy the original body??

... Ooooh the shenanigans that could ensue...

Could I... use gentle repose... and animate myself... and make out with myself...

[Deepbluediver]

Could I... use gentle repose... and animate myself... and make out with myself...

You're still making out with a corpse; it might not be rotting, but it's still cold, dead, flesh.

Though I guess if you're into that sort of thing I shouldn't judge...
I'm totally judging.

[Raven777]

That's what the heater function on Prestidigitation (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/p/prestidigitation) is for!

[Gildedragon]

You're still making out with a corpse; it might not be rotting, but it's still cold, UNdead, flesh.

Though I guess if you're into that sort of thing I shouldn't judge...
I'm totally judging.

There we go.
It gets weirder when one awakens the creature.