Positive energy and negative energy; Why good and evil?

[Xuldarinar]

Dwelling on positive energy and negative energy, especially given their roles in pathfinder though this isn't specifically for pathfinder, a thought had occurred to me. Why is it they are associated (to some degree) with good and evil? Would it not make more sense for negative energy to be associated with chaos and positive energy be associated with law?

[avr]

First, remember that this was set up back in the 70s. Look at it through the lens of 1970s New Age mysticism. Negative energy is bad, positive energy is good.

Then negative energy was associated with undead, and pathfinder made undead (almost) always evil. Whether that was to simplify targeting decisions for PCs (It's undead! Kill it!) or otherwise, it associated negative energy even more closely with evil.

[inuyasha]

Dwelling on positive energy and negative energy, especially given their roles in pathfinder though this isn't specifically for pathfinder, a thought had occurred to me. Why is it they are associated (to some degree) with good and evil? Would it not make more sense for negative energy to be associated with chaos and positive energy be associated with law?
You know the rule, I need to show up at least once!
I've always thought the same thing, though sort of in reverse...

I see positive energy as the absolute manifestation of life, wild, unbound, so much so that some creatures infused with it can animate objects by merely being near them. And other creatures that get too much of it can explode as they are overwhelmed by a mass of energy. Therefore positive energy is chaos

Negative energy however is death, it is cool, cold, unforgiving, and it is the inevitable. Nothing escapes death, and those that do are punished by the Inevitables themselves. So I think that negative energy is probably law.

[Psyren]

Dwelling on positive energy and negative energy, especially given their roles in pathfinder though this isn't specifically for pathfinder, a thought had occurred to me. Why is it they are associated (to some degree) with good and evil? Would it not make more sense for negative energy to be associated with chaos and positive energy be associated with law?

I don't see the logic here. Wouldn't that mean Azata/Eladrin can't heal anyone, or Asmodeus can't inflict or harm?

[Ettina]

Positive energy heals ordinary living mortals, negative energy hurts them. The reverse is true for undead, who often try to kill and sometimes eat living mortals.

Therefore, from the mortals' perspective, positive energy = good and negative energy = bad.

The dieties who like mortals also tend to align with positive energy, while the dieties who dislike mortals (or prefer the undead) align with negative energy.

Good and evil are just mortals' names for positive and negative energy, and the dieties that align with those energy types.

They could have ended up calling fire evil, except that fire can also be used to cook food and light up the darkness, so fire is considered dangerous but not bad.

[Xuldarinar]

I understand from the mortal vector, but I can explain the rationale of perhaps its more suited to chaos than evil.


Negative energy is destructive, entropic. It brings things to the state they will inevitably move towards. Sure, it is unfriendly to mortal life, but it is no more evil than fire. Positive energy, conversely, undoes the damage done. It helps place things in a more ordered state, flesh included.

Thats not to say good shouldn't use positive energy, or that evil can't find use in negative energy, but from my point of view they are energies more in line with chaos and law than being intrinsically good or evil. A fire isn't evil after all.


You know the rule, I need to show up at least once!
I've always thought the same thing, though sort of in reverse...

I see positive energy as the absolute manifestation of life, wild, unbound, so much so that some creatures infused with it can animate objects by merely being near them. And other creatures that get too much of it can explode as they are overwhelmed by a mass of energy. Therefore positive energy is chaos

Negative energy however is death, it is cool, cold, unforgiving, and it is the inevitable. Nothing escapes death, and those that do are punished by the Inevitables themselves. So I think that negative energy is probably law.

While I disagree with your conclusion, I can see what you are getting at and it is a valid interpretation. The way I see it, though who attempt to escape death are using the entropic energy of the universe to extend their existence rather than what it normally would do and bring it to its natural conclusion. They are violating the fundamental laws and are, as I perceive it, using chaos to defy them. Undead are unnatural creatures.

[MisterKaws]

Law and Chaos have uses for both of them, while Good and Evil find more use to Positive and Negative energy respectively, as Good is associated with the preservation of life, and evil with the 'zero ****s given to the preservation of whatever' policy.

[Necroticplague]

Dwelling on positive energy and negative energy, especially given their roles in pathfinder though this isn't specifically for pathfinder, a thought had occurred to me. Why is it they are associated (to some degree) with good and evil? Would it not make more sense for negative energy to be associated with chaos and positive energy be associated with law?

They aren't. As Inner Planes, both are Mildly Neutral aligned. They are as Evil and Good as Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, and serve the same purpose as being the fundamental building blocks of matter and energy in the Prime Material. Note that spells that use straight negative (like Inflict Wounds line) aren't necessarily evil (if it was, pretty much all of Necromancery would have an [evil] tag on it), and spells that use straight positive (like Cure Wounds line) aren't necessarily good. For further proof, creatures formed entirely of Negative and Positive energies (Known as Energons, split into Xeg-yi and Xog-ya [can never remember how to spell those two]) are True Neutral.

[Psyren]

PF/Golarion has this to say:


Buried deepest within the Inner Sphere are the Positive and Negative Energy Planes—twin poles of creation and destruction.

Here's the thing though - destruction can be used for evil and chaos, certainly, but it can also be used for good and law. The reverse is true too - creation can be put to evil and chaotic purposes. In both cases, it depends on the thing you're creating or destroying, and how that will affect others.

Because of entropy, creating is more often used by/results in good, and destruction is more often used by/results in evil.

[Ethereal Gears]

In our homebrew setting, the Material Plane is strongly tied to Chaos, Life and the Past. Chaos is manifested in the Plane of Chaos, while Life is manifested in the Positive Energy Plane and the Past is manifested in the Primal World, the World of the Fey. The Shadow Plane, by contrast, is tied to Law, Death and the Future. Law is manifested in the Plane of Law, Death is manifested in the Negative Energy Plane and the Future is manifested in the Final World, a surreal hypermodernist realm inhabited by living objects, ideas and concepts, called "apparati", which are a sort of crazy anti-fey. The Past, in this set-up, is connected with Nature, fey being Nature's children. The Future, by contrast, is connected with Civilization, and the apparati are to it as fey are to Nature.

In this set-up, Life (positive energy) is naturally allied to chaotic, unbridled life force, and thus also Chaos, while Death (neg. en.) is allied to cool, morose death and the dreary melancholia of the Shadow Plane, and thus also Law.

[Genth]

One of my favorite theories, and I'm *positive* that I've seen it in a PF book somewhere, is that the NEP is sentient. It's aware, and wants, quite badly, to get everything back to the primordial nothingness from whence it came. The shadow plane is the 'twisted reflection' of the material plane because it was created by the NEP to mock and harm and eventually destroy the material plane.

[Milo v3]

It's good and evil because the designers want Undead = Evil, despite the fact that neither of the energy planes are good or evil. Also, I personally think if they were aligned they should be Positive = Chaotic & Negative = Lawful, since life is chaotic and death is absolute and unchanging (unless you go with a major arcana viewpoint to death).

[ThisIsZen]

Technically, the state of maximum entropy (universal heat death) is the most ordered the universe can be. Every particle an equal distance away from every other particle, space growing infinitely and equally in between all particles, forever. Is that kind of a horrifying thought, as a being that has a stake in keeping all its particles together? Absolutely. Still, it can't be called anything but orderly. Entropy is order. It's just not hospitable.

That being said, the basic gist of it is that morality in D&D (and by extension Pathfinder) is an awful cesspool of inconsistent and muddied definitions, because the game is designed assuming objective morality but no one actually took the time to sit down and define the axioms of that morality. Expecting consistency or logic in the applications of alignment descriptors is a fool's errand. This is at least partially why I toss alignment entirely in my games.

My personal pet theory regarding positive and negative energy is that they're simply opposed forces. We have evidence that negative energy can serve as the animating force of a body, in fact better than positive energy can (undead are immortal and require no sustenance outside of their own animating force, contrast with the needs and limited lifespan of a positive-energy-animated creature). However, because negative energy is hostile to things which live via positive energy (and, of course, vice versa), it's viewed dimly. Combine this with the fact that any society with a death taboo will have significant issues with the undead, and you've got the recipe for a lot of rejection, fear and loathing.

The fact that almost all undead creatures are targets designate is just because, again, D&D wasn't interested in exploring morality much even as it posited an objective set of moral rules. Zombies, skeletons and other fiendish living corpses make good hack and slash mooks, and ancient liches and armored death knights make iconic antagonists.

(As an aside, I hate the use of Deathless outside of Eberron as a way of patching this hole. They make sense in their proper context and cosmology, but just feel like a lazy avoiding of the question in a standard Great Wheel setup.)

[Psyren]

We have evidence that negative energy can serve as the animating force of a body, in fact better than positive energy can (undead are immortal and require no sustenance outside of their own animating force, contrast with the needs and limited lifespan of a positive-energy-animated creature).

That's actually worse. Undead don't need sustenance, which seems good, but it also means they can't be sated. So when you have things like Shadows, Vampires, Wraiths, and Mohrgs that feed on the living, they tend to do so indefinitely because they never get "full."

[Milo v3]

Oh, and don't forget that their are negative animated living creatures that still need to eat, drink and breathe.

[ThisIsZen]

I think that kind of ties in with my point about undead being written as easy targets designate, rather than exploring the ideas of alternative modes of existing/animating/living. There's nothing really in the undead typing itself that implies an undead with hungers will feed insatiably - that's a symptom of being a wraith, shadow, etc. specifically. (Vampires, for instance, often "drink their fill" or limit their hunting to as few victims as possible to avoid detection, and are described as glutted, fat, full, etc., on blood whenever the author needs a suitably revolting image. As far as vampires being compelled to feed goes - hunger is kind of inherently a compulsion. Humans are also compelled to eat, they just eat things that they, being humans, generally consider agreeable. The issue with a vampire's diet isn't that it has one, it's what it consists of. Just to take a stab at that particular example.)

I'll admit that my justifications mostly amount to "well it doesn't HAVE to be like that" rather than any evidence that it isn't like that at the moment. I just really like more nuanced treatments of the entire condition of undeath.

[Milo v3]

I'll admit that my justifications mostly amount to "well it doesn't HAVE to be like that" rather than any evidence that it isn't like that at the moment. I just really like more nuanced treatments of the entire condition of undeath.

Unfortunately, with the whole lack of undead in real life, that's as much evidence as I think we're gonna get. :smalltongue:

[Jormengand]

We have evidence that negative energy can serve as the animating force of a body, in fact better than positive energy can (undead are immortal and require no sustenance outside of their own animating force, contrast with the needs and limited lifespan of a positive-energy-animated creature).

Tell that to the Deathless.

[ThisIsZen]

I did, at the bottom of that post. Primarily by telling them I hate them and think they're stupid, whenever they go creeping out of Eberron. :P

[Jormengand]

I did, at the bottom of that post. Primarily by telling them I hate them and think they're stupid, whenever they go creeping out of Eberron. :P

My point, I suppose, is that "Animated by (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/animateObjects.htm) positive energy (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ravid.htm)" is a whole different bucket from (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#constructType) "Alive, and has positive energy".

[Aldrakan]

My explanation, which is admittedly Golarion specific but potentially adaptable, is that it's not that NE is inherently evil, but that it has been corrupted. Zun-Kuthon, god of pain, has made his home in the plane of shadows which connects to the NE plane for millennia (thanks Abadar!), and the first undead is believed to have been the evil goddess Urgathoa. Essentially they've been able to co-opt a large chunk of NE to serve them (mostly Urgathoa, but Zun-Kuthon hasn't exactly helped).
I'm playing a white necromancer (3pp), and the explanation for my ability to create non-evil undead is that many undead-creating spells are metaphysically linked to Urgathoa or appeal to evil spirits, and so its necessary to alter them to remove these elements.
For example our explanation for sentient undead having souls is that a new negative energy spirit, which in its natural form is a barely sentient collection of impulses, shows up to take over the corpse, using the mind left within the body to gain consciousness and the body to fuel its manifestation. This gives rise to a range of undead depending on the efficiency of the transition from shadows (no body at all, very dumb, nothing of the original person remains, almost an unaltered negative energy spirit) to juju zombies (preserves the body entirely, retains all memories and skills). Create Undead normally appeals to spirits dominated by violence and hunger and envy, and most necromancers don't care because they want conscienceless monsters, but it is possible to attract more benevolent ones if you rework the spell.

Because the gods with the most ties to the NE plane are evil, most naturally occurring undead utilize are possessed by the evil spirits they send out.

[Andezzar]

It's good and evil because the designers want Undead = Evil, despite the fact that neither of the energy planes are good or evil. Also, I personally think if they were aligned they should be Positive = Chaotic & Negative = Lawful, since life is chaotic and death is absolute and unchanging (unless you go with a major arcana viewpoint to death).I agree. I always thought that positive/negative energy would much better fit a concept like the Wyld/Weaver from the world of Darkness than Good/Evil. Now where does the Wyrm fit in D&D?...

[The Viscount]

Dwelling on positive energy and negative energy, especially given their roles in pathfinder though this isn't specifically for pathfinder, a thought had occurred to me. Why is it they are associated (to some degree) with good and evil? Would it not make more sense for negative energy to be associated with chaos and positive energy be associated with law?

Might it? Maybe.

The likely reason that I think they are so strongly associated with the alignments stems from a textual rules based thing. Good Clerics can spontaneously cast cure x, and evil Clerics can spontaneously cast inflict x. There is also of course the Undead association, that being that all Undead are animated by and/or healed by negative energy, and most undead are evil in alignment. I'm not going to discuss why they are (largely because I don't believe most undead should be evil, especially the mindless ones) but they are. From this idea it has spread to other rules, such as the necrocarnum melds being evil. That's my idea, at least.

[ericgrau]

Even by RAW they aren't necessarily good and evil. Positive energy is often associated with good because it is associated with life. Negative energize often associated with evil because it is associated with death and undeath. Many processes of making an undead are evil. The reasons aren't well specified, but maybe they mess with the soul in some way. Often people even wonder why even this is evil when an undead creature could be used for good or evil, but I think it's not what you do with them but the creation process itself that is evil. I mean the person can't be raised from the dead; so what's going on with his soul?

It's like saying why is curing often seen as good and killing often seen as evil? Well because one helps and one hurts, but it isn't always that way. Adventurers kill for good reason all the time.

The positive energy plane itself is actually one of the most inhospitable planes. Celestia and so on are the actual good planes, and they are not flooded with positive energy.

Good clerics do get spontaneous curing while evil ones get spontaneous inflicting, but these spell are not [evil] or [good].

As for alternate alignment associations, I don't really see much link between healing and law, nor between hurting and chaos. It seems weaker than the other alignment axis. Maybe for living vs undead but that still seems weak.

[daryen]

To amplified ericgrau's answer, maybe you are just looking at it wrong. The PMP and NMP just are; they are not good, evil, law, or chaos. They just are. Good clerics don't channel positive energy because positive energy is good, but simply use it to perform good. Evil clerics use negative energy because it serves their evil purposes, not because negative energy is evil.

So, PE and NE are just unaligned tools, and have no alignment. It is just good and evil using the particular tools available to advance their goals.

[Psyren]

To amplified ericgrau's answer, maybe you are just looking at it wrong. The PMP and NMP just are; they are not good, evil, law, or chaos. They just are. Good clerics don't channel positive energy because positive energy is good, but simply use it to perform good. Evil clerics use negative energy because it serves their evil purposes, not because negative energy is evil.

So, PE and NE are just unaligned tools, and have no alignment. It is just good and evil using the particular tools available to advance their goals.

This answer isn't very satisfying though because it doesn't explain why evil clerics can't channel positive energy (at least, not easily.) If you're in an evil church that doesn't deal with undead - say, one that focuses on fiends or aberrations - surely being able to channel positive energy would be just as practical since it can heal those creatures, in addition to the cleric himself/herself. Therefore, if PE is just a tool, there should be nothing barring them from accessing that tool.

But if you go with "every NE channel introduces just a touch more darkness/evil into the world" it explains why clerics of an evil church that focuses on living creatures would still be okay with channeling negative energy, even if it isn't quite as directly practical for the cleric or benefactors themselves.


My explanation, which is admittedly Golarion specific but potentially adaptable, is that it's not that NE is inherently evil, but that it has been corrupted. Zun-Kuthon, god of pain, has made his home in the plane of shadows which connects to the NE plane for millennia (thanks Abadar!), and the first undead is believed to have been the evil goddess Urgathoa. Essentially they've been able to co-opt a large chunk of NE to serve them (mostly Urgathoa, but Zun-Kuthon hasn't exactly helped).
I'm playing a white necromancer (3pp), and the explanation for my ability to create non-evil undead is that many undead-creating spells are metaphysically linked to Urgathoa or appeal to evil spirits, and so its necessary to alter them to remove these elements.
For example our explanation for sentient undead having souls is that a new negative energy spirit, which in its natural form is a barely sentient collection of impulses, shows up to take over the corpse, using the mind left within the body to gain consciousness and the body to fuel its manifestation. This gives rise to a range of undead depending on the efficiency of the transition from shadows (no body at all, very dumb, nothing of the original person remains, almost an unaltered negative energy spirit) to juju zombies (preserves the body entirely, retains all memories and skills). Create Undead normally appeals to spirits dominated by violence and hunger and envy, and most necromancers don't care because they want conscienceless monsters, but it is possible to attract more benevolent ones if you rework the spell.

Because the gods with the most ties to the NE plane are evil, most naturally occurring undead utilize are possessed by the evil spirits they send out.

I view this the other way around myself - the Golarion NEP (as mentioned by Genth) is actually sentient, and the endless hunger it has for life makes it attractive to evil deities. (There are also practical considerations to setting up shop there, e.g. fewer paladins and angels coming to visit, and any undead guardians getting home field advantage.)

[Milo v3]

I view this the other way around myself - the Golarion NEP (as mentioned by Genth) is actually sentient, and the endless hunger it has for life makes it attractive to evil deities.

I've always found that annoying considering it's not one of the settings several evil planes of existence....

[Psyren]

I've always found that annoying considering it's not one of the settings several evil planes of existence....

That's because it's not; the universe needs somewhere that eats life, otherwise the PEP will just keep churning out souls until there's no room for anything else to exist.

What's evil is channeling that Negative Energy into the Material, or anchoring it there in the form of undead. It doesn't belong here, and putting it here just accelerates the entropy/decay that already exists. (Very dramatically, if a Wightocalypse scenario is allowed to happen.)

[Milo v3]

It doesn't belong here, and putting it here just accelerates the entropy/decay that already exists. (Very dramatically, if a Wightocalypse scenario is allowed to happen.)
Does anyone else find it weird that negative energy is meant to be destructive and entropy and breaking down things eternally.... yet it is the easiest method of immortality and keeps undead's personalities and minds static and the samey and requires no sustenance. Seems sorta... opposite to it's own themes.

[Psyren]

Does anyone else find it weird that negative energy is meant to be destructive and entropy and breaking down things eternally.... yet it is the easiest method of immortality and keeps undead's personalities and minds static and the samey and requires no sustenance. Seems sorta... opposite to it's own themes.

I'm not sure "personality and minds static and samey" is an accurate statement. Fiction is full of long-lived undead (well, unlived, but you get the idea) who gradually grow increasingly depraved, malicious or insane as the centuries wear on - e.g. the Nazgul, Lord Soth, the Lich King, or Malack and Xykon etc. And even when you do have undead whose mindset stays fairly static, generally this is (a) because they're already as base or twisted as it's possible to get to begin with (e.g. Dracula or Vigo), and (b) they're still serving the causes of destruction and entropy by causing or attempting to cause the death and decay of large numbers of living creatures - so it doesn't actually matter that they themselves are not getting any worse, if that's even possible.

[zergling.exe]

I'm not sure "personality and minds static and samey" is an accurate statement. Fiction is full of long-lived undead (well, unlived, but you get the idea) who gradually grow increasingly depraved, malicious or insane as the centuries wear on - e.g. the Nazgul, Lord Soth, the Lich King, or Malack and Xykon etc. And even when you do have undead whose mindset stays fairly static, generally this is (a) because they're already as base or twisted as it's possible to get to begin with (e.g. Dracula or Vigo), and (b) they're still serving the causes of destruction and entropy by causing or attempting to cause the death and decay of large numbers of living creatures - so it doesn't actually matter that they themselves are not getting any worse, if that's even possible.

The Book of Bad Latin in 3.5 says that undead do not change mentally at all. They continue to try and use their old methods on new problems. So if an undead doesn't change mentally when becoming undead, like a necropolitan, then they will continue to think the way that they did when they were alive forever.

[Milo v3]

I'm not sure "personality and minds static and samey" is an accurate statement. Fiction is full of long-lived undead (well, unlived, but you get the idea) who gradually grow increasingly depraved, malicious or insane as the centuries wear on - e.g. the Nazgul, Lord Soth, the Lich King, or Malack and Xykon etc. And even when you do have undead whose mindset stays fairly static, generally this is (a) because they're already as base or twisted as it's possible to get to begin with (e.g. Dracula or Vigo), and (b) they're still serving the causes of destruction and entropy by causing or attempting to cause the death and decay of large numbers of living creatures - so it doesn't actually matter that they themselves are not getting any worse, if that's even possible.

Well libris mortis says "Unlike living creatures, which grow and mature throughout their life cycles, undead are usually changeless, frozen in the moment of their creation. Most are cursed to never adopt new philosophies, or change with the uncertainties and lessons of life, or ever find happiness.", and later
"Undead exist, they do not live. Life means change, and while undead endure over time and learn new facts, they rarely change or appreciate new paradigms. Aside from a rare few exceptions, an undead’s outlook remains stagnant over the decades, or centuries, of its existence, despite new experiences and new situations it may encounter.

This inflexible mental nature is the reason many ancient undead seem insane. In fact, they may merely be operating with goals and aspirations that are slightly out of step with the present world. Unfortunately, like any ambition that cannot be swayed by reason or tempered by changing circumstances, the goals of the stubborn immortal undead become a cankerous evil that can only be excised. While a living creature may accept compromise when life hands it a new challenge, undead can rarely do anything other than what they have always done."

[Psyren]

Well libris mortis says "Unlike living creatures, which grow and mature throughout their life cycles, undead are usually changeless, frozen in the moment of their creation. Most are cursed to never adopt new philosophies, or change with the uncertainties and lessons of life, or ever find happiness.", and later
"Undead exist, they do not live. Life means change, and while undead endure over time and learn new facts, they rarely change or appreciate new paradigms. Aside from a rare few exceptions, an undead’s outlook remains stagnant over the decades, or centuries, of its existence, despite new experiences and new situations it may encounter.

This inflexible mental nature is the reason many ancient undead seem insane. In fact, they may merely be operating with goals and aspirations that are slightly out of step with the present world. Unfortunately, like any ambition that cannot be swayed by reason or tempered by changing circumstances, the goals of the stubborn immortal undead become a cankerous evil that can only be excised. While a living creature may accept compromise when life hands it a new challenge, undead can rarely do anything other than what they have always done."

I bolded the important parts of your quote - they sink into depravity over time because the world around them changes while they don't. LM goes on to say that undead detach themselves from their former lives over time and "cannot feel empathy for would-be victims because they no longer feel a kinship." They see themselves simply as predators and the living as prey.

These quotes seem contradictory but the change is not happening within the undead itself, but rather its relation to the changing world around it. If you're standing on the shore as a boat sails away, the distance between you grows even if you yourself are standing still.

[Ravanan]

This answer isn't very satisfying though because it doesn't explain why evil clerics can't channel positive energy (at least, not easily.) If you're in an evil church that doesn't deal with undead - say, one that focuses on fiends or aberrations - surely being able to channel positive energy would be just as practical since it can heal those creatures, in addition to the cleric himself/herself. Therefore, if PE is just a tool, there should be nothing barring them from accessing that tool.

But if you go with "every NE channel introduces just a touch more darkness/evil into the world" it explains why clerics of an evil church that focuses on living creatures would still be okay with channeling negative energy, even if it isn't quite as directly practical for the cleric or benefactors themselves.

Personally, I'd say it depends on the deity. Positive energy is definitely associated with creation and repair, and negative energy is definitely associated with destruction and decay.

What is more likely to further the goals of a particular deity? For the overwhelming majority of good deities, the ability to create is more important than the ability to destroy. Likewise, the overwhelming majority of evil deities are more concerned with having the ability to destroy than to create.

With that said, I think it would be entirely in keeping with the spirit of a deity like Droskar (http://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Droskar) for their clerics to be able to choose positive or negative energy. Even, were he in this setting, I think clerics of Nurgle should have their choice.


I'd argue that the clerics of evil gods of tyrants (nation-builders), craftsmen, or rebirth should entirely be able to choose what type of energy they channel. On the other hand, the clerics of good deities of rebellion, vengeance, and warfare should be able to select negative energy instead. Likewise, depending on the deity, they should ONLY be able to channel the "opposed" energy type.

[Pex]

I did, at the bottom of that post. Primarily by telling them I hate them and think they're stupid, whenever they go creeping out of Eberron. :P

The Deathless predate Eberron. Eberron was just the first published campaign world to use them in an official capacity.

:smallbiggrin:

[Andezzar]

All clerics can use both positive and negative energy. Iti is just the spontaneous conversion that is limited. I get that this may be due to the deities' outlook and (un)willingness to aid their unprepared clerics more directly, but I agree that it is not always clear which side it would favor regardless of alignment.

I would agree with you on Nurgle if all the other spells that help against diseases and poisons would be associated with positive energy, but Nurgle makes his followers tougher and maybe shields them from the ravages of disease, but it would not really heal IMHO.

[Telok]

Dwelling on positive energy and negative energy, especially given their roles in pathfinder though this isn't specifically for pathfinder, a thought had occurred to me. Why is it they are associated (to some degree) with good and evil? Would it not make more sense for negative energy to be associated with chaos and positive energy be associated with law?

Because the people who wrote 3e tried to 'simplify' things from AD&D, and add new stuff to the simplified stuff, and never thought about why the stuff they were changing was a certain way in the first place.

In the old D&Ds alignment was picking sides in a conflict even more central to the nature of the universe than life, death, or the gods. Animals, golems, and non-intelligent undead were unaligned because they were not capable of choosing sides. So the +/- energy planes were also unaligned because they handn't been created by an aligned diety.

WotC, when they made 3e, changed alignment into... something. I never did figure out what it was supposed to be because it's used as morals, magic auras, nonmagic auras, codes of conduct, types of magic, damage types, and other stuff. Plus creatures that can't think or choose have alignments now, and nobody can agree on what that means.

So the energy planes are sorta kinda aligned (whatever that means) but not aligned except when they are which is mostly when gods grant spells and powers to their followers. But not always.

Plus with all the metamagic floating around I'm pretty sure you can have a Fireball that's half positive energy and also [Evil]. There's probably a way to make spells booth good and evil at the same time.

[ericgrau]

This answer isn't very satisfying though because it doesn't explain why evil clerics can't channel positive energy (at least, not easily.) If you're in an evil church that doesn't deal with undead - say, one that focuses on fiends or aberrations - surely being able to channel positive energy would be just as practical since it can heal those creatures, in addition to the cleric himself/herself. Therefore, if PE is just a tool, there should be nothing barring them from accessing that tool.
It's still super easy. Prepare a spell, or carry a wand like most good clerics do anyway. As for why they can do it spontaneously, healing has a small tendency towards good, harming a small tendency towards evil. That's all. Especially for clerics who aren't adventurers, and might want to go around healing. Good clerics can and should prepare some inflict spells without the slightest alignment shift, evil clerics can and should prepare some cure spells. In the end all it does is mainly prevent good clerics from preparing any cure spells and evil ones from ever preparing inflicts. It has a very small impact on what they actually cast. An evil cleric might prepare 2 cures of a certain level and say "Darn, I needed 3 today, ok you flee, we'll heal you with the wand in a moment as soon as we kill these guys <inflict serious wounds>".

I think if cures and inflicts were a lot more powerful and if those of an opposing alignment had trouble using them at all, then you might have something. As it is, it's a minor fluff thing that has only a small impact both mechanically and on alignment role play. Not none, but minor.

[Psyren]

It's still super easy. Prepare a spell, or carry a wand like most good clerics do anyway. As for why they can do it spontaneously, healing has a small tendency towards good, harming a small tendency towards evil. That's all. Especially for clerics who aren't adventurers, and might want to go around healing. Good clerics can and should prepare some inflict spells without the slightest alignment shift, evil clerics can and should prepare some cure spells. In the end all it does is mainly prevent good clerics from preparing any cure spells and evil ones from ever preparing inflicts. It has a very small impact on what they actually cast. An evil cleric might prepare 2 cures of a certain level and say "Darn, I needed 3 today, ok you flee, we'll heal you with the wand in a moment as soon as we kill these guys <inflict serious wounds>".

I think if cures and inflicts were a lot more powerful and if those of an opposing alignment had trouble using them at all, then you might have something. As it is, it's a minor fluff thing that has only a small impact both mechanically and on alignment role play. Not none, but minor.

I was more referring to Pathfinder, where Channel Energy is a lot of free healing that (living) evil clerics have to give up. I think that's a bit more significant than just the spontaneous preparation/conversion aspect of things. (3.5 has a variant where turning clerics can channel healing energy too.)

[ThisIsZen]

The Deathless predate Eberron. Eberron was just the first published campaign world to use them in an official capacity.

:smallbiggrin:

Touche. Regardless, I still think they're inelegant and lazy as a resolution to the moral questions posed by undead. "No look, these guys are powered by the Good (TM) non-moral energy type so for no reason they're legit."

EDIT: Regarding cleric casting/channeling, I honestly don't know that that should be extrapolated on its own to say anything about the universe. In some cases, Evil clerics spontaneously casting Inflict spells makes no sense, but the alternative would be to print a "followers channel:" entry into every deity's entry. A majority of the printed evil deities, or at least the best antagonists (Nerull, Erythnull and Vecna, for ex) use undead minions, so evil npc clerics will usually get a lot of use out of the inflict spells, at least in theory. And it keeps from creating even more deity-specific mechanics.

Personally, if I didn't already delete alignment from the game, I would houserule channeling/spont casting to depend on the deity, and give positive channeling to some evil deities and vice versa.

[Psyren]

There are plenty of immortal creatures that are powered by positive energy. Deities for instance are Outsider type. So I don't consider Deathless to be a problem - every rule has its exceptions. But the vast majority of living creatures eventually die, proving that entropy is a thing.


In some cases, Evil clerics spontaneously casting Inflict spells makes no sense, but the alternative would be to print a "followers channel:" entry into every deity's entry.

This is actually easy - just use the domains instead. Spontaneous Domain Casting and Variant Channeling cover the instances where using negative energy wouldn't be in a church's best interests.

[ThisIsZen]

It's less that there exist immortal PE creatures and more that Deathless are just undead except inexplicably PE powered. They're still things which at some point died and whose corpses are maintained/animated by energy. It just feels unnecessary and little bit inexplicable to me - PE is the stuff of living creatures, not dead ones. Deathless only exist cause of the conflating of NE and evil, which isn't even fluff - supported.

[Psyren]

They're created by magic though - the whole purpose of magic is breaking rules. You might randomly come across one like you would a zombie, ghoul, or skeleton, but the odds are pretty slim. For me that's fine.


Deathless only exist cause of the conflating of NE and evil, which isn't even fluff - supported.

Negative energy in general, no, but specific uses of it - most notably animating or rebuking undead - are absolutely defined as evil in fluff.

[Pex]

Touche. Regardless, I still think they're inelegant and lazy as a resolution to the moral questions posed by undead. "No look, these guys are powered by the Good (TM) non-moral energy type so for no reason they're legit."

EDIT: Regarding cleric casting/channeling, I honestly don't know that that should be extrapolated on its own to say anything about the universe. In some cases, Evil clerics spontaneously casting Inflict spells makes no sense, but the alternative would be to print a "followers channel:" entry into every deity's entry. A majority of the printed evil deities, or at least the best antagonists (Nerull, Erythnull and Vecna, for ex) use undead minions, so evil npc clerics will usually get a lot of use out of the inflict spells, at least in theory. And it keeps from creating even more deity-specific mechanics.

Personally, if I didn't already delete alignment from the game, I would houserule channeling/spont casting to depend on the deity, and give positive channeling to some evil deities and vice versa.

I can see the logic behind them. Osiris is a Lawful Good deity of death and allows for mummies to guard tombs. He's a mummy himself. In 2E they get around evil mummies by having "Greater Mummies", a more powerful mummy that can have any alignment though susceptible to falling into evil. Plus there's the "Arch Lich", a lich who just happens to be good. Perhaps one who sacrifices his eternal rest to protect the innocent and the world. A stretch, maybe, but it shows pre-Book of Exalted Deeds precedent. Even just considering mummies their original intent isn't evil. They're guardians of tombs against grave robbers and despoilers. For 3E they decided to specifically make all undead evil, whether one approves of that or not, so they forced themselves to create the Deathless to have the concept of good eternal guardians.

[ThisIsZen]

Now that I'm no longer posting from my phone...

The thing is, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. Magic breaks rules. The Deathless annoy me at least partially because they were unneccessary; the undead typing existed and it would've been fairly simple to just say that the spells/rituals which create the "deathless" creatures aren't [Evil] nor acts of evil in any way.

Which is what I mean by Deathless being the result of the mistaken assumption that negative energy is Evil Energy. The idea was that the only way to create good creatures which have lived on past their own mortal deaths was to create an entirely new typing to switch the animating energy around. It stretches the definition of positive energy into the realm of death, which dilutes things thematically, and just seems unnecessary to me.

That said, this is kind of sidetracking the thread, so I'll drop it here.

[Psyren]

I can see the logic behind them. Osiris is a Lawful Good deity of death and allows for mummies to guard tombs. He's a mummy himself. In 2E they get around evil mummies by having "Greater Mummies", a more powerful mummy that can have any alignment though susceptible to falling into evil. Plus there's the "Arch Lich", a lich who just happens to be good. Perhaps one who sacrifices his eternal rest to protect the innocent and the world. A stretch, maybe, but it shows pre-Book of Exalted Deeds precedent. Even just considering mummies their original intent isn't evil. They're guardians of tombs against grave robbers and despoilers. For 3E they decided to specifically make all undead evil, whether one approves of that or not, so they forced themselves to create the Deathless to have the concept of good eternal guardians.

I personally think that's the distinction though, and the origin of Deathless - they were meant to be like that knight from Last Crusade that guarded the holy grail for eternity. As a group, they're immortal for a reason, and (outside of Eberron anyway, where they are just another amoral political faction), they're perfectly content to move on to their reward when and if that task is fulfilled. For them, sticking around is a sacrifice in itself, because they're actually giving up eternal bliss to do it, and they have no interest in using their considerable power to propagate themselves or seek personal gain. That to me is why Deathless need to exist as separate entities from ravenous or power-hungry undead.

Note that BoED backs up this interpretation nearly point for point. Again, Eberron does it differently primarily because they wanted to be all edgy and cool with their evil silver dragons and lightning trains.

[ericgrau]

I was more referring to Pathfinder, where Channel Energy is a lot of free healing that (living) evil clerics have to give up. I think that's a bit more significant than just the spontaneous preparation/conversion aspect of things. (3.5 has a variant where turning clerics can channel healing energy too.)

Ah Pathfinder did make positive/negative energy a lot better. Yeah sucks to be the wrong cleric type for what you want then. Selective channeling with negative energy to damage isn't bad though.

[daremetoidareyo]

I agree. I always thought that positive/negative energy would much better fit a concept like the Wyld/Weaver from the world of Darkness than Good/Evil. Now where does the Wyrm fit in D&D?...

The whole world of darkness mythology shares some parallels with Hindu beliefs about the destroyer, the sustainer, and the creator. Wyrm would be negative energy; Weaver would be positive energy; and wyld would the wyldcard in the situation seeing as how it's closest analogue is "sustainer".

The neat thing about this mythological spectrum is that it nicely corellates to how people perceive time. The past is eaten away behind you, the future is assembled in front of you, and the present is a razor thin sliver that you get to perceive, which is the border between the two.

If, however, we inherited an aboriginal australian POV of time, things would be a little different; to that worldview, man isn't oriented facing the future. The future is unknown. But man can clearly see the past, so they perceive us as moving into the future back first, with our face pointed towards the past. In this perspective, the weaver would be associated the past, with all of creation clearly visible to us, built by our integration into the world. The wyrm is behind us, in the future, eating its way in every direction, giving us space within which to weave. And the wyld would be the sustainer, the thing that allows one to perceive and weave at all.

Wedging positive energy and negative energy into that schema is quite difficult. And to be honest, positive and negative energy would most likely be associated with the wyld. Remove any moral lens from what those energy types do and you see that Negative energy relates to hunger and draining where positive energy relates to overstuffing and infusion. It is rather neat that the negative energy plane is more associated with stability in that it can animate undead for eternities whereas the positive energy plane is far more unstable, temporarily imparting life to things that don't even have the structural capacities to be alive.

It makes sense to treat negative and positive energy planes not as moral or immoral but as Amoral. They are raw elemental concepts pertaining to life and unlife. It is also curious how they parallel ions and cations. Which are tools we use in chemistry, electronics, and biology all the time.

[Psyren]

^ But even in your own example, Wyrm started out as an amoral force and ended up going nuts and becoming explicitly evil. So there's actually a visible parallel to the NEP becoming sentient and hungry.

More to the point, there is a reason why negative energy and entropy have to be "winning" in a setting, and more of it thus being evil - because a balanced and morally neutral setting is one that doesn't need heroes or champions to save it. Undead are an easy expression of that - at best they tend to be aloof and amoral, and at worst they are a cancerous plague on the living.

[Solidarity]

They aren't. As Inner Planes, both are Mildly Neutral aligned. They are as Evil and Good as Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, and serve the same purpose as being the fundamental building blocks of matter and energy in the Prime Material. Note that spells that use straight negative (like Inflict Wounds line) aren't necessarily evil (if it was, pretty much all of Necromancery would have an [evil] tag on it), and spells that use straight positive (like Cure Wounds line) aren't necessarily good. For further proof, creatures formed entirely of Negative and Positive energies (Known as Energons, split into Xeg-yi and Xog-ya [can never remember how to spell those two]) are True Neutral.

This. Through a lot of research I couldn't find any source book for 3-3.5 that legitimately said that either energy type was good or bad. As mentioned, I also hypothesize they aren't like all other energy types. Though there are vile elementals, elemental evil and the like, straight negative energy couldn't be evil. If it was, every spell that used it ought to include the matching descriptor. It's common however that perspective-based opinions perceive them as either good or evil, but again that is a perspective.