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halfeye
2015-08-22, 07:19 PM
I'm new in this part of the forum, but theres a suggestion that's bugging me, and this seems like the right place to ask.

It seems to me to make some sense for healing and resurrection spells to be evil.

Real world doctors aren't evil, but spells that heal unbalance things, and that seems to potentially be a dark side trait.

I'm not saying it would necessarily be more fun if healing spells etc were dark aligned in games, but it might change gameplay quite a lot, it would give game designers another way to mess with player's heads, and that might work out to the good.

Oberon Kenobi
2015-08-22, 07:33 PM
For my two cents, I don't think that using magic for healing unbalances things any more than, say, using herbs and poultices does. Or any more than using magic to kill things with fire, on the other side of the coin. Treating certain types of magic as somehow inherently evil strike me as very much a DnD construct anyway, and I think that it undermines a lot of the moral complexity of good and evil when you just boil them down into spell descriptors. :smallannoyed:

But let's take the idea at face value. Maybe all the healing magic in the world comes from evil sources–like you hear about people striking deals with a devil to raise their loved ones from the grave or whatever else? Just extend that to any sort of magical healing. Maybe, as you say, healing with magic specifically unbalances things because the gods / spirits of nature / whatever other vague quasi-omnipotent forces that guide the universe give each creature a certain span of life, and magic can break that span. Maybe demons taught healing magic to mortals specifically to undermine the work of the Powers That Be–so on top of whatever direct benefit demons get out of their pacts with mortals (e.g., another soul for... whatever it is that demons are supposed to use souls for), they also score a small metaphysical victory in their long war against the heavens.

NB: All this is sounding more order vs. chaos than good vs. evil, but that's another debate.

Now why don't we turn it around and say that harmful magic comes from the forces of 'good'? Like, celestial creatures grant the ability to rip the life out of creatures that have lived longer than they should have, or shouldn't have been born or crawled out of the abyss in the first place.

I'm not sure what kind of setting all this implies–maybe one where the PCs are meant to pick a side between life and chaos and all their dangers versus order and death and security–but it's kind of a neat chain of thought.

Keltest
2015-08-22, 07:40 PM
In general, whenever I have seen something like this come up, it is because the Good forces are unwilling or unable to alter things so drastically. There are rules that prevent them from straight up replacing the heart of that guy who just got stabbed, or giving that drunken dwarf three replacement livers.

Evil meanwhile has no such restrictions, or doesn't care about them, and so is perfectly willing and able to throw around power like that. Plus, its great PR, something that Evil is always after.

I don't think I have ever seen it portrayed where the actual power to heal is Evil though, implicitly or explicitly.

LudicSavant
2015-08-22, 07:48 PM
Moral philosophies that don't connect questions of good and evil to questions about the well-being of conscious creatures tend to have little more significance than colored hats.

JellyPooga
2015-08-22, 08:07 PM
There's certainly precedent for treating or at least viewing magical healing as evil.

Any setting in which any magic is seen as the work of "dark forces" or as a result of some kind of demon deal, would have a healer viewed with suspicion at the very least. Then, of course, there's the possibility of healing magic actually being the work of dark forces, leading to moral quandaries of the "you think you're doing good or blessed by a good deity, but you're really selling your soul or being given power by a darker god" type.

Similarly, a setting in which magic is rare, or largely unseen by the greater part of the population, would produce similar results. A regular surgeon or herbalist is viewed as a trusted and respected member of society, but some dude turns up with glowing hands and achieves in seconds what it would take weeks or even months under the care of the established medical profession. That dude's asking to be run out of town.

JBPuffin
2015-08-22, 09:20 PM
I'm inclined to think that it'd take some kind of outside force to cause this point of view. Maybe when you heal someone, the health is taken from someone else? Dark Sun-ish, really, but that or Kenobi's idea seem very practical ways of making healing evil.

Grek
2015-08-22, 09:44 PM
As a counterpoint: Good is best defined as helping other people and healing magic is the most pure form of that there is. Unless there are severe drawbacks which make healing a net harm, it's very hard to justify a view where healing someone is a morally inferior choice to not healing that someone. Throwing the world out of "balance" isn't enough unless the balance itself is not only Good, but more Good than a world where the wounded are healed and the sick made healthy. Having healing magic be fueled by demons or devils isn't a particularly satisfying option either. If you have the Devil going around granting cancer victims a cure and restoring limbs to amputees, that doesn't make healing itself bad, it just suddenly becomes a lot more ethically troublesome to say that all devils need to be driven back to hell.

If you want healing to be morally complicated, why not involve an element of triage? Suppose that there's a campaign specific rule where a Cure spell can be used to create a number of Potions of Cure Minor Wounds equal to the number of hit points it would have normally restored, but only one of which would provide any benefit per day. For Cure Light Wounds, you're now choosing between instantly repairing a single injury on a single friend, or donating 1d8+5 healing potions to a hospital and potentially saving a dozen lives. Is it selfish to hoard your healing talents solely for yourself and your close friends? Evil, even?

Mechalich
2015-08-22, 09:52 PM
In a D&D context healing magic means dumping extra positive energy into your crystal sphere. In some sense, yes, this could be considered unbalancing - since a world overwhelmed by positive energy ultimately turns into a star - though that wouldn't be evil, per se, since the positive energy plane itself is neutral, but it could be considered turning a world that is otherwise good further towards evil.

However, generally this isn't going to be an issue because there are others pulling negative energy into the world in order to balance positive energy importations out. While inflict spells are not cast with anything like the frequency of cure spells, intelligent undead are pulling negative energy into the world just by existing. So, unless your world has eradicated evil undead and evil faiths entirely, the unbalancing impact of magical healing is a rounding error at best.

goto124
2015-08-22, 10:55 PM
Similarly, a setting in which magic is rare, or largely unseen by the greater part of the population, would produce similar results. A regular surgeon or herbalist is viewed as a trusted and respected member of society, but some dude turns up with glowing hands and achieves in seconds what it would take weeks or even months under the care of the established medical profession. That dude's asking to be run out of town.

I dunno, why would that not make him the new popular healer in town?

TheOOB
2015-08-22, 11:12 PM
In the D&D sense, healing would't be evil. It wouldn't be good either, it depends how you use it.

In some settings it could be considered less than lawful though, though most systems of governance would see the value in healing magic even if it technically isn't considering to be proper magic.

Satinavian
2015-08-23, 01:44 AM
Once magical healing was necromancy. You could go back there and make the connection even stronger. Maybe healing is not so much about restoring a body but replacing lost body functions with magic. Your body can act as if unharmed and any danger from your injuries or wound is gone, but real restoration of the prior states still depends on natural healing. And if you are wounded and magically healed often, more often than your body can cope with, you will eventually become undead, your body only a messy framework of remains moved and hold together by magic alone.

goto124
2015-08-23, 02:08 AM
What game systems would you recommand for this 'healing is evil' idea?

Hopefully, one where the PCs can still survive reasonably well without the use of healing magic.

It does seem to contribute to a 'gritty'/high-lethality style of game, since healing is difficult and healing magic is full of negative consequences.

Wardog
2015-08-23, 03:24 AM
It does seem to contribute to a 'gritty'/high-lethality style of game, since healing is difficult and healing magic is full of negative consequences.

Unless you are a D&D Paladin (and so would fall for using your class features as intended), declaring that "healing is evil" doesn't in itself cause any negative consequences (other than bringing the Alignment system into even greater disrepute).

If you want to make healing morally ambiguous / a source of conflict / something you have to balance against negative consequences, those negative consequences have to be actually defined.

Kalmageddon
2015-08-23, 05:10 AM
They shouldn't be evil, but they should be Necromancy instead.
Actually, I think they were, but it got changed because it undermined the stupid assumption that "necromancy = evil".

The_Snark
2015-08-23, 06:45 AM
Throwing the world out of "balance" isn't enough unless the balance itself is not only Good, but more Good than a world where the wounded are healed and the sick made healthy.

Agreed. If you want to make this work, you have to establish why disturbing the balance is such a bad thing, or you risk making players see your alignment system as an arbitrary label with little-to-no relation to morality. (Or even creating a paradox, if you take it far enough: committing too many good acts throws off the balance between good and evil, therefore good acts are evil?)

For what it's worth, D&D typically associates balance with neutrality, rather than good - druids, rilmani, and so on - and I think this makes sense. Balance is not good; it is somewhere between good and evil almost by definition.

Millstone85
2015-08-23, 06:50 AM
Our party (same D&D4eFR campaign I am always talking about) has a cleric of Kelemvor. He has ruled all resurrection methods as impious necromancy and will not bring back anyone. He also leaves most of the healing magic to the bard.

JellyPooga
2015-08-23, 08:31 AM
I dunno, why would that not make him the new popular healer in town?

In time, perhaps, but in a society that doesn't recognise magic as being a thing that occurs, or that only knows of magic from stories where it's used by evil sorcerers, witches and the like, you get all the consequences of superstition running amok. The established healer, for one, may perceive a threat to his/her business and (depending on their outlook) might well be the one fomenting the lynch mob!

Nifft
2015-08-23, 09:02 AM
I don't feel like all healing should be Evil, but I think it's a really cool idea to have some healing be Evil, and to have people in general ignorant enough that they don't know the difference.


I'm inclined to think that it'd take some kind of outside force to cause this point of view. Maybe when you heal someone, the health is taken from someone else? Dark Sun-ish, really, but that or Kenobi's idea seem very practical ways of making healing evil.
Stealing health from others sounds pretty Evil. I totally dig that as the methodology of Evil Healing.


Once magical healing was necromancy. You could go back there and make the connection even stronger. Maybe healing is not so much about restoring a body but replacing lost body functions with magic. Your body can act as if unharmed and any danger from your injuries or wound is gone, but real restoration of the prior states still depends on natural healing. And if you are wounded and magically healed often, more often than your body can cope with, you will eventually become undead, your body only a messy framework of remains moved and hold together by magic alone. Yeah, I like the Necromancy connection.

So, maybe...

1 - All Healing is Necromancy. All Necromancy looks vaguely similar when cast. Ignorant people can't tell if you're casting Animate Dead or Lesser Restoration when you shake your skull-staff around.

2 - There's a series of cheap, low-level spells which damage one person and heal another. Perhaps the Inflict Wounds spells also heal an ally within 30 feet -- that would make them actually get used in combat. A pious Cleric would cast Inflict Wounds on himself only.

3 - A Paladin's Lay On Hands would not look like Necromancy, since it's not a spell. Paladins would look like awesome miracle healers and not icky Necromancers.

4 - Perhaps there's also a series of more expensive Necromancy spells -- maybe expensive in terms of material component, maybe level -- which heal a target without dealing damage to anyone. These spells are not Evil, but they are expensive, because the gods won't heal anyone for free.

halfeye
2015-08-23, 01:00 PM
In the D&D sense, healing would't be evil. It wouldn't be good either, it depends how you use it.
I'm not saying it is under the current rules, I'm querying the value of a potential rule change.


In some settings it could be considered less than lawful though, though most systems of governance would see the value in healing magic even if it technically isn't considering to be proper magic.

I'm coming to this from computer games, in Quake it was health packs, in Max Payne it was painkillers, in the Elder Scrolls it is healing spells. In the real world, if you get injured it may take a long time to heal, or never fully heal, in games it can be seconds. In Dungeon Master there were altars of Vi that brought a being all the way back from dead (there was a slight penalty I think, but I was never sure exactly what that was).


What game systems would you recommand for this 'healing is evil' idea?

Hopefully, one where the PCs can still survive reasonably well without the use of healing magic.

It does seem to contribute to a 'gritty'/high-lethality style of game, since healing is difficult and healing magic is full of negative consequences.

Gritty high lethality seems to be what you'd get, perhaps, but then again maybe a lower level of damage done to player characters would work?


Unless you are a D&D Paladin (and so would fall for using your class features as intended), declaring that "healing is evil" doesn't in itself cause any negative consequences (other than bringing the Alignment system into even greater disrepute).

At this point, I'm saying "would it work if ..." I'm not saying that it definitely does work.


If you want to make healing morally ambiguous / a source of conflict / something you have to balance against negative consequences, those negative consequences have to be actually defined.

I'm sure that's right, but what I'm asking is whether it would be a useful idea, I'm not at the point of setting up a scenario using the idea. This idea came in part from The Giant's objections to resurrection in all its forms as a story hindering device.

Waddacku
2015-08-23, 01:52 PM
Not automatically evil, but what if all healing magic worked by draining living beings nearby, at an unfavorable rate of drain-to-healing (whatever that means to a particular system), but spread out among nearby life forms?

Mastikator
2015-08-23, 04:36 PM
When exactly does healing spells unbalance things?
And how does "unbalance" mean "evil"? If unbalance is evil is the opposite true? If I perfectly balance rocks on each other, is that good?

As far as I can tell unless a healing spell explicitly states it does an equal amount of damage to an equally important other being then no, it's not even. Even if you use healing magic to heal a murderer it's still not evil (unless you're using it as a way to enable the murderer to continue murdering)

Milo v3
2015-08-23, 05:54 PM
If adding additional negative energy to the material is considered evil, then positive energy probably should to.

Arbane
2015-08-23, 07:45 PM
What game systems would you recommand for this 'healing is evil' idea?

Hopefully, one where the PCs can still survive reasonably well without the use of healing magic.

It does seem to contribute to a 'gritty'/high-lethality style of game, since healing is difficult and healing magic is full of negative consequences.

Both Deadlands and call of Cthulhu have had Evil Healing.

Deadlands had a poor deluded fellow who was granted healing powers... that corrupted the soul of anyone he used them on.

Call of Cthulhu's magic isn't evil, exactly... it's just that when a bunch of hairless monkeys try using reality-modifying hypermathematics created by unimaginable entities, it never seems to end well for them.

Both are horror games.

As for making resurrection evil, that's dirt easy. Anyone you bring back via magic either comes back wrong, or they brought something else back with them... or both.

Wardog
2015-08-24, 03:35 AM
At this point, I'm saying "would it work if ..." I'm not saying that it definitely does work...

I'm sure that's right, but what I'm asking is whether it would be a useful idea, I'm not at the point of setting up a scenario using the idea. This idea came in part from The Giant's objections to resurrection in all its forms as a story hindering device.

I think it could work, but would need a good reason, both in-universe and in a meta-game sense.

If the only reason is avoid making major injury (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0006.html) trivial from a story perspective (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0008.html), then you would probably be better off jest nerfing or removing easy magical healing.

If you want people to be able to negate major wounds, but at the cost of your literal or metaphorical) soul, introduce moral dilema, or ensure healers have to go underground then I think it could work, but you would need to explain what "healing is evil" actually means (in terms of what it does to the healer/healed/third parties) otherwise you'll just get people putting "Alignment: Evil" on their character sheet and carrying on as before.



Both Deadlands and call of Cthulhu have had Evil Healing.
As for making resurrection evil, that's dirt easy. Anyone you bring back via magic either comes back wrong, or they brought something else back with them... or both.

Or you need to kill someone else to make it work. (Like the Babylon 5 episode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathwalker) where an alien Dr Mengele turned up with a device that could heal or resurect someone by fatally syphoning off the lifeforce of someone of the same species).

Roderick_BR
2015-08-24, 01:57 PM
Why would healing be evil? Good clerics and paladins gain healing powers from benefic deities, and druids, that are ALL about balance can heal stuff.
Some could even argue that healing magic just speeds up natural healing to mythical levels.
As people pointed out, it would only be somewhat evil if it actually took power out of other people/creatures/places.
Ressurrection could also be considered evil only if people considered being taken away from their "eternal rest" is evil, but then again, people that dont want to come back just denies the magic from working, so only people that want to come (unfinished business) can come.

Not saying it can't be considered evil in a game, but would be some very specific campaign thing (in Ravenloft, ressurrection would be one of the actions with the worst side-effects from the "did evil, get punished" table)

Some more ideas for the "unbalance" idea: Whenever someone uses healing magic, the ambient life force is sucked into it. It means that natural healing is delayed, since the local lifeforce is weakened. Everyone just feels generally weaker and morose for days.
Druid magic that extracts power from nature weakens local florests, and they know it, so they avoid it as much as possible.

Ressurrection likewise, forces souls from their rest, so it's use is frowned upon. Adventurers that use it for their benefit are seen as dangerous for having access to this sort of thing. Maybe the ritual actually requires sacrifices to reuse the stolen life force. That would make it very evil, even if for good intentions.

Kantaki
2015-08-25, 10:33 AM
Or you need to kill someone else to make it work. (Like the Babylon 5 episode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathwalker) where an alien Dr Mengele turned up with a device that could heal or resurect someone by fatally syphoning off the lifeforce of someone of the same species).

I think you are mixing up two things there. The alien doctor wanted to sell the recipe for a immortality drug that was made from other sentient beings, to make the various species of the galaxy exterminate each other. The machine was in the possesion of a human doc who used it to heal the poor on Babylon 5 using her own lifeforce.

Anyway, on topic: Well, if you rule that healing and resurrection magic work by redirecting life energy that would otherwise go elsewhere that would be a good point for them being evil.

Sure, healing a single wound wouldn't mean much, maybe some plants grow a bit slower or some small animals life a a bit shorter, but the greater the effect the more life-energy is missing elsewhere. You healed your comrades heavy wounds? Someone, somewhere looses a few years of their life. You return someone from death? Ripping their souls from the afterlife aside, you just killed someone.

If healing magic would be something that involves harming someone to serve your own goals it would be clearly evil.

goto124
2015-08-25, 08:16 PM
What system would be best to demostrate this?

On the bright side, some awesome Life Drain spells!

Themrys
2015-08-29, 01:10 PM
In time, perhaps, but in a society that doesn't recognise magic as being a thing that occurs, or that only knows of magic from stories where it's used by evil sorcerers, witches and the like, you get all the consequences of superstition running amok. The established healer, for one, may perceive a threat to his/her business and (depending on their outlook) might well be the one fomenting the lynch mob!

Yup. Real world history tells us that he would not become popular quickly.
The guy who noticed that women were dying of childbed fever in higher numbers on a special floor of the hospital than on others, was derided when he suggested that maybe the medicine students should wash their hands in disinfectant inbetween dissecting the corpses of women who died of childbed fever, and examining the genitals of women who had just given birth.

Just because something works does not mean the establishment will like it. If there is any control of people in the medical business, your new magic healer will have difficulties even getting in.

The role of bacteria in causing illnesses was eventually recognized, and healing magic might be, too, but it will take some time.

Kami2awa
2015-08-29, 01:17 PM
Unless it's got a serious drawback (such as Equivalent Exchange from the Full Metal Alchemist setting), I can't see magical healing being viewed as evil (barring irrational superstition). However, I can definitely see resurrection being seen as evil given the reality of the D&D afterlives - particularly if (contrary to the D&D rules) the resurrectee doesn't get to choose whether or not they come back.

If you resurrect a good person, you're dragging them back from the paradise they earned in life, back into an imperfect world full of evil and suffering. If you resurrect an evil one, you're rescuing them from the punishment they deserve and setting them loose on the world to cause further evil. Furthermore, you're potentially provoking the wrath of deities and fiends by doing either.

Furthermore, if unwilling resurrection is possible, it will likely be the tool of sadistic villains once they capture the good guys. "Even in death, you will not escape me..."

ReaderAt2046
2015-08-30, 05:09 PM
In the Death Gate cycle, bringing someone back from the dead is relatively easy magic, but for every person brought back from the dead someone of the same species falls down dead for no apparent reason.

dps
2015-08-31, 08:19 PM
Maybe healing is not so much about restoring a body but replacing lost body functions with magic. Your body can act as if unharmed and any danger from your injuries or wound is gone, but real restoration of the prior states still depends on natural healing. And if you are wounded and magically healed often, more often than your body can cope with, you will eventually become undead, your body only a messy framework of remains moved and hold together by magic alone.

I like this idea, though even then I don't think that healing would necessarily be evil. In practical terms, it would essentially turn magic healing from a panacea into a temporary first aid patch.

halfeye
2015-09-02, 02:29 PM
Once magical healing was necromancy. You could go back there and make the connection even stronger. Maybe healing is not so much about restoring a body but replacing lost body functions with magic. Your body can act as if unharmed and any danger from your injuries or wound is gone, but real restoration of the prior states still depends on natural healing. And if you are wounded and magically healed often, more often than your body can cope with, you will eventually become undead, your body only a messy framework of remains moved and hold together by magic alone.

Yeah, that's kind of where I was aiming, maybe. I was mainly interested in restoration being only available to evil oriented characters, but then healing seemed to naturally fall into that regime as well. Once restoration is evil, healing almost has to be the same alignment, though less extreme.
.
The implications seem to be useful to the building of interesting games. You can heal yourself, but there is a risk/cost (as compared to e.g. the Elder Scrolls in which healing eats mana, but you regain that in seconds, which is barely a cost if you're not using mana for anything else at the time, and you easily regain enough mana to maintain eg healing spells and all feather spells you can cast).

goto124
2015-09-03, 06:23 AM
Why should it be evil, as opposed to just risky?