If a kingdom is ruled legitimately and fairly (enough) by a lich?

[Max_Killjoy]

"Push this button. If you do not, you will be savagely beaten by the five strongest people I can find. If you do, I will give you a million dollars."

"I don't want to push the button."

"Ok. You're going to get savagely beaten then."

"INJUSTICE! WE'RE BREAKING THE CONDITIONING!"

I'll take the million dollars, thanks. Enjoy your savage beating. Gotta pick your battles.


And when 10 people refuse to push the button?

100?

1000000?


This branch of the discussion is just making it more and more understandable why anyone on Faerun would become a lich given the chance.
(Setting aside the "must commit a very evil act to be determined at a later time" thing.)

[halfeye]

That's fair. Side comment, though: demons and devils are more akin to angels and the like. Even in Christianity, the Devil is generally considered a lesser order of being than God. Most religions of which I'm aware refer to "gods" as distinct from "supernatural good/evil-aligned beings." Now, they may BE supernatural and aligned, but the "demons" of the faith tend to be distinct from "evil gods" of the faith.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that most religions of which I'm aware that have multi-god pantheons don't so much HAVE "demons" or "angels" as they have just good and evil gods. The Norse come closest, with different "families" of gods and the frost giants serving as somewhere between devil-like figures and generic monster-horde figures.

Kali.


It means that good and evil are generally about how much you care for and respect others and their rights to exist and achieve happiness. It's about goals and outcomes as well as means, and as much about reasons as it is about specific acts. The paladin genuinely faced with a hard choice might not fall for ANY of the options, if he makes his choice for the right reasons and with the best judgment he can muster. A paladin faced with a seemingly easy choice might nonetheless fall if he makes the "easy" choice for the wrong reasons (though admittedly, in a game context, this can be hard to detect).

So you define "good" by what it seeks to accomplish, and by its attitudes towards others. You define "evil" similarly.

Evil is about the self and maybe a few others, and most importantly about not caring how badly you have to hurt those outside that circle. It's about viewing people as objects and tools to be used up and discarded, or obstacles to be destroyed, because the only "real people" are yourself and whoever you deign to decide matters.

To some extent, you can measure a transition from evil to neutral to good by how wide that circle of "real people" gets, but there's another quality to it: those outside that circle of "real people" can be viewed with degrees of personhood. The neutral person views them largely as deserving to be treated like "real people" at least until they actively are in the way, and even then, to minimize the abuse of them. Neutral people tend not to like seeing others hurt, but are willing to inflict pain for their own benefit if they can justify the pain as minor enough. Or the victim as "deserving it." The "deserving it" scale can also help gauge a position between neutral and evil. Or even neutral and good, as the "deserving it" level of allowable enjoyment diminishes the more good you are.

Good people as a general rule view EVERYONE as "real people." That's not to say they think animals are people, but rather that they have a definition of "person" that is not defined by how well they know somebody, or by membership in a particular "liked" group. Nor even defined by lack of membership in a "disliked" group, though there is room for discussion over whether somebody with a bigoted view of particular groups can be "good" or not.

The reason "the greater good" often becomes a byword for "actually pretty evil" is because it starts to view people as statistics, and not as people.



The above is why it has to be holistically considered. A Good man in a very hard position might make a lot of questionable-seeming calls, because it really is the best he can think of to do with what choices he has. As long as he never allows himself to start doing it with ease and expediency, he can avoid a slide to neutrality even while appearing pretty grim. Even if he's got enough wisdom to not feel guilt, he still will feel dreadful sorrow that is, in its own way, just as bad, every time he's forced to make a choice he wishes he could find a better option than. And he'll never, ever stop trying to find a better way. Nor will he let himself fall into the trap of assuming "any" way is better, as long as it hurts a DIFFERENT group. (This is the trap that catches most well-intentioned extremists.)

An Evil man can appear very good in many actions! But it is his reasons as much as his deeds which defines his alignment. Those people he's helping aren't "people" to him. They're statistics, tools, patsies...objects. And if they stop being useful when treated like a Good person would, he will stop bothering...or might even "expend" them for his personal benefit, if their expenditure is of greater worth to him than their continued being. But even so, those circumstances may never arise, and so he appears good...for now.


Something, then, in what it takes to be a Lich requires that you not be making "the hard choice" when you genuinely have no other option. It requires, on some level, viewing people as not-people, as worth less than your own existence, and acting on that devalued estimate of their worth to their extreme detriment.

That sounds grand, so long as there are enough resources to go around. However, resources are finite, and potential population isn't. So how do we pick the actual future population from the potential? We can leave it to war and famine, but is that good? or even the best we can do?

[Segev]

I have at least one character which would prefer to be that "wandering soul," but not be shoved into that wall, to being "claimed" by a deity. Sure, he acknowledges they're real, but undeath and eternal life both sound way better than petitioner status, and it's doubtful that any deity would be thrilled to place him in a position he'd want considering how little he's willing to do for them. Say a couple of hail marys? Eh, maybe. He doesn't mean it, though, except that he is checking a box.

Lichdom is definitely his fallback choice if he can't avoid death at all.


That sounds grand, so long as there are enough resources to go around. However, resources are finite, and potential population isn't. So how do we pick the actual future population from the potential? We can leave it to war and famine, but is that good? or even the best we can do?

Toeing awfully near the philosophical discussion of real objective good and evil, here, but the truth is that resources are not as finite as people make them out to be. Yes, there can be times where they are, but if you're taking the long perspective this quote seems to be, more population tends to yield more usable resources per capita as each bit of surplus adds up and compounds into freeing up more people to be specialists, which more efficiently uses resources and opens up more ways to access harder-to-reach resources and thus yields still MORE resources than were previously available, which can be used to increase efficiency of existing resource-harvesting/producing activities...

What is mostly required is to have each person be motivated to maximally harvest, create, or exploit the resources within their reach, and not be complacent on "just enough" (especially if they're relying on others' surplus for their "just enough"). Now, that's in general.

On a personal scale, where the Good shines through because each individual is a person, it is the Good person's goal to generally see to it that people are maximally empowered to do this. To aid those who need it, because valuing people in general leads to better things than seeing them as statistics, objects, or resources to be used only while useful.

The Evil see people only in how they can be useful to them. The most enlightened of these evil people will see value in some good behaviors, but will ultimately find certain kinds of people that Good would nurture and careful to be "worthless," and seek to dispose of them. In so doing, they create a problem of differing judgments, and will lead to other Evil people who are perhaps more short-sighted feeling justified in disposing of "less" useful people, overall hindering things.

But the point is, again, that Good people tend to see people as people. Valuable in their own right. Evil people see at least broad categories of people as things to be exploited or ignored or destroyed.

In true famine of resources, you can have those "hard choices" that good people must make. But that is also why you have to take that holistic approach, rather than identifying ACTIONS as "always" good or evil.

[tomandtish]

Add to the fact that D&D explicitly says to become a lich requires an act of unspeakable evil. I take the term to mean something beyond the pale of what would be considered forgivable. Now that's a 5E specific description. AD&D uses the following:



What's interesting is that the process isn't inherently evil in AD&D, but most of liches are evil since generally speaking only evil spellcasters are interested in that kind of power.

Dragon Magazine back in the AD&D days (and before issue 100 I believe) actually had a module with a CN lich. Basically just got wrapped up in studying and ended up a lich through force of will alone.

[halfeye]

Toeing awfully near the philosophical discussion of real objective good and evil, here, but

Yes, that's a problem.


the truth is that resources are not as finite as people make them out to be.

This is a mistake. Things are finite, or they are infinite, it's a binary choice, something is one or the other, this universe is huge beyond reason, but it isn't infinite.


Yes, there can be times where they are, but if you're taking the long perspective this quote seems to be, more population tends to yield more usable resources per capita as each bit of surplus adds up and compounds into freeing up more people to be specialists, which more efficiently uses resources and opens up more ways to access harder-to-reach resources and thus yields still MORE resources than were previously available, which can be used to increase efficiency of existing resource-harvesting/producing activities...

Yeah we're not yet at the limits of the available, but there definitively are limits somewhere out there. There are a billion galaxies, with a billion stars each, but in the very very long run (trillions of years? quagrillions?) that's not infinity.


What is mostly required is to have each person be motivated to maximally harvest, create, or exploit the resources within their reach, and not be complacent on "just enough" (especially if they're relying on others' surplus for their "just enough"). Now, that's in general.

On a personal scale, where the Good shines through because each individual is a person, it is the Good person's goal to generally see to it that people are maximally empowered to do this. To aid those who need it, because valuing people in general leads to better things than seeing them as statistics, objects, or resources to be used only while useful.

The Evil see people only in how they can be useful to them. The most enlightened of these evil people will see value in some good behaviors, but will ultimately find certain kinds of people that Good would nurture and careful to be "worthless," and seek to dispose of them. In so doing, they create a problem of differing judgments, and will lead to other Evil people who are perhaps more short-sighted feeling justified in disposing of "less" useful people, overall hindering things.

But the point is, again, that Good people tend to see people as people. Valuable in their own right. Evil people see at least broad categories of people as things to be exploited or ignored or destroyed.

In true famine of resources, you can have those "hard choices" that good people must make. But that is also why you have to take that holistic approach, rather than identifying ACTIONS as "always" good or evil.

Except that the hard times tend to come sooner if nobody is caring about the resources running dry.

[Segev]

"If we don't ration our water to only the bare minimum we need to survive, we'll eventually run out!"
"We live in the middle of a freshwater ocean, and there are only a thousand of us. We couldn't drink this much water in our combined lifetimes if we WANTED to."
"If we don't think about rationing now, our descendants will die of thirst when they use it all up!"


Yes, there is a finite amount of stuff out there. We are so extremely, laughably far from being ABLE to exploit even a measurable percentage of it that this kind of concern is more geared to thwart advance than it is to preserve against future need. Such "preservation" actually breeds dearth, by starving the engines that enable growth. Nobody is advocating refusal to be aware of the eventual heat-death of the universe. However, given the way resources become available with progress, focusing on increasing that, in this time and place in our history, is more productive than hedging against something we cannot begin to impact at our current level.

Let our descendants worry about it, not because we're kicking a very real can down the road, but because we can't even reach the can yet. Our job is to get our descendants to the point where they have a big enough measuring stick to evaluate the can in real terms, and their descendants the ability to build a big enough boot to kick it or even stomp it flat. Because any concern we have over that one real finity is illusory gobbledygook. We can be aware of the shadow of the potential of the problem, but our understanding is so limited right now that we can't even be certain that the shadow we're seeing is really reflecting that which casts it. We have barely opened our eyes to peer at the cavern wall where Socretes's puppet show is being performed. We can barely see the fuzzy shapes of light and dark, let alone get a grip on the truths at which they hint.

Let our duty be to grow and empower our descendants in this time of plenty, and lay up as much as we can for their use and betterment, so that they might stand on our shoulders as giants and actually be capable of addressing the problem.

[Zale]

Because that's the choice the gods force into .

The very existence of The Wall is proof that the gods are either not as powerful as they claim, or have actively chosen to consign souls that don't kiss their arses to that fate.

When injustice is law, resistance is duty.

http://i.imgur.com/Ys4eicA.jpg

-Mathangi ten Meti 'Murder the Gods and Topple Their Thrones' Maya. (http://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/ksbd-4-69/)

[halfeye]

"If we don't ration our water to only the bare minimum we need to survive, we'll eventually run out!"
"We live in the middle of a freshwater ocean, and there are only a thousand of us. We couldn't drink this much water in our combined lifetimes if we WANTED to."
"If we don't think about rationing now, our descendants will die of thirst when they use it all up!"


Yes, there is a finite amount of stuff out there. We are so extremely, laughably far from being ABLE to exploit even a measurable percentage of it that this kind of concern is more geared to thwart advance than it is to preserve against future need. Such "preservation" actually breeds dearth, by starving the engines that enable growth. Nobody is advocating refusal to be aware of the eventual heat-death of the universe. However, given the way resources become available with progress, focusing on increasing that, in this time and place in our history, is more productive than hedging against something we cannot begin to impact at our current level.

Let our descendants worry about it, not because we're kicking a very real can down the road, but because we can't even reach the can yet. Our job is to get our descendants to the point where they have a big enough measuring stick to evaluate the can in real terms, and their descendants the ability to build a big enough boot to kick it or even stomp it flat. Because any concern we have over that one real finity is illusory gobbledygook. We can be aware of the shadow of the potential of the problem, but our understanding is so limited right now that we can't even be certain that the shadow we're seeing is really reflecting that which casts it. We have barely opened our eyes to peer at the cavern wall where Socretes's puppet show is being performed. We can barely see the fuzzy shapes of light and dark, let alone get a grip on the truths at which they hint.

Let our duty be to grow and empower our descendants in this time of plenty, and lay up as much as we can for their use and betterment, so that they might stand on our shoulders as giants and actually be capable of addressing the problem.

With regard to some things, on this Earth, this is surely right (oxygen, water) with others (helium, rare earths, global cooling), it is not the case.

[Max_Killjoy]

"If we don't ration our water to only the bare minimum we need to survive, we'll eventually run out!"
"We live in the middle of a freshwater ocean, and there are only a thousand of us. We couldn't drink this much water in our combined lifetimes if we WANTED to."
"If we don't think about rationing now, our descendants will die of thirst when they use it all up!"


Yes, there is a finite amount of stuff out there. We are so extremely, laughably far from being ABLE to exploit even a measurable percentage of it that this kind of concern is more geared to thwart advance than it is to preserve against future need. Such "preservation" actually breeds dearth, by starving the engines that enable growth. Nobody is advocating refusal to be aware of the eventual heat-death of the universe. However, given the way resources become available with progress, focusing on increasing that, in this time and place in our history, is more productive than hedging against something we cannot begin to impact at our current level.

Let our descendants worry about it, not because we're kicking a very real can down the road, but because we can't even reach the can yet. Our job is to get our descendants to the point where they have a big enough measuring stick to evaluate the can in real terms, and their descendants the ability to build a big enough boot to kick it or even stomp it flat. Because any concern we have over that one real finity is illusory gobbledygook. We can be aware of the shadow of the potential of the problem, but our understanding is so limited right now that we can't even be certain that the shadow we're seeing is really reflecting that which casts it. We have barely opened our eyes to peer at the cavern wall where Socretes's puppet show is being performed. We can barely see the fuzzy shapes of light and dark, let alone get a grip on the truths at which they hint.

Let our duty be to grow and empower our descendants in this time of plenty, and lay up as much as we can for their use and betterment, so that they might stand on our shoulders as giants and actually be capable of addressing the problem.


This is sounding way too much like "growth uber alles!"

Unchecked, careless growth inevitably will mean that our (well, not mine) descendants don't even get a chance to see the can, let alone kick it.

[Segev]

This is sounding way too much like "growth uber alles!"

Unchecked, careless growth inevitably will mean that our (well, not mine) descendants don't even get a chance to see the can, let alone kick it.

Sorry to hear you're not planning on having kids. I look forward to when I will eventually meet and fall in love with the woman with whom I'll raise some.

Regardless, "growth uber alles" is actually pretty sound, because any dynamic system that isn't growing is almost certainly shrinking. Even if it seems stable now, its stability is not sustainable. One misplaced disaster...


The only thing that will prevent our descendants from being able to do something about that can will be if we refuse to improve what we now have, and trap them as being no more capable than we are today.

[Max_Killjoy]

Sorry to hear you're not planning on having kids. I look forward to when I will eventually meet and fall in love with the woman with whom I'll raise some.

Regardless, "growth uber alles" is actually pretty sound, because any dynamic system that isn't growing is almost certainly shrinking. Even if it seems stable now, its stability is not sustainable. One misplaced disaster...


The only thing that will prevent our descendants from being able to do something about that can will be if we refuse to improve what we now have, and trap them as being no more capable than we are today.


Don't mistake growth for actual advancement.

[halfeye]

Sorry to hear you're not planning on having kids. I look forward to when I will eventually meet and fall in love with the woman with whom I'll raise some.

Regardless, "growth uber alles" is actually pretty sound, because any dynamic system that isn't growing is almost certainly shrinking. Even if it seems stable now, its stability is not sustainable. One misplaced disaster...


The only thing that will prevent our descendants from being able to do something about that can will be if we refuse to improve what we now have, and trap them as being no more capable than we are today.

Bubbles burst. People can be hurt that way too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company


The South Sea Company (officially The Governor and Company of the merchants of Great Britain, trading to the South Seas and other parts of America, and for the encouragement of fishing)[3] was a British joint-stock company founded in 1711, created as a public-private partnership to consolidate and reduce the cost of national debt. The company was also granted a monopoly to trade with South America, hence its name. At the time it was created, Britain was involved in the War of the Spanish Succession and Spain controlled South America. There was no realistic prospect that trade would take place and the company never realised any significant profit from its monopoly. Company stock rose greatly in value as it expanded its operations dealing in government debt, peaking in 1720 before collapsing to little above its original flotation price;

Growth needs to be based on reality. Ponzi schemes are evil, even if some "investors" make a profit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme

Things aren't static other than economically, science is making great advances, building on the previous work where possible, by-passing it where it was wrong, but going forward at an almost exponentially increasing rate.

[Segev]

Don't mistake growth for actual advancement.


Bubbles burst. People can be hurt that way too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company



Growth needs to be based on reality. Ponzi schemes are evil, even if some "investors" make a profit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme

Right. So you guys semantically substitute "growth" where I was discussing advancement and utility of resources, then redefine "growth" to mean "arbitrarily using pretend numbers to make it look like something is growing when there's nothing backing it."

Max, I'm going to give both of you a benefit of a doubt and assume you didn't MEAN to deliberately misinterpret me and create this strawman, and simply state that I do mean advancement.

I am then going to stop this line of discussion, as it's off topic and treading dangerously close to (if not stomping firmly in) real-world philosophy, which I don't believe we're supposed to be discussing in this forum.

[Max_Killjoy]

Max, I'm going to give both of you a benefit of a doubt and assume you didn't MEAN to deliberately misinterpret me and create this strawman, and simply state that I do mean advancement.


I'd probably be breaking the rules of the forum if I tried to explain why "growth" has become a word that triggers nothing but cynicism when I read/hear it at this point.

[LordCdrMilitant]

I'm generally of the mindset that scientific progress and actual economic expansion is a good thing.

I know at least one person who doesn't though, because people can be negatively impacted by technology and economic expansion as much as others may benefit, and depending on who you stand with, progress may be the instrument of runaway success or the catalyst of all your suffering.


Anyway, my 2c on liches:
If the party wants to depose the lich, the results should be logical. If the citizenry loves their lich ruler, then the locals may attack the party and drive them away, convicting them of regicide. If the citizenry has been chafing under it's rule, then perhaps they'll rise up to help the party and establish a new and more fair government. I'm not really big on fixed morality.

[NichG]

Zero-sum games tend to have much harsher optimal strategies than non-zero-sum games. Details of the differences between specific kinds of growth aside, the idea that I don't have to try to take what you have because its possible for us to work together and make something new for me to have too leads to much more cooperative and humanist behavior on the whole, even from selfish actors.

And as far as asymptotic finity versus infinity, anything which isn't a bottleneck is indistinguishable from infinity in the long run. There may be a finite supply of protons in the universe, but for proton decay to be the bottleneck on your (species-level) survival, you're going to be killed by a lot of other stuff first anyways, including things like 'species genetic identity has a finite persistence scale about 25 orders of magnitude shorter' or 'species as a concept may not be able to remain relevant in the forms which can survive in a universe in which proton decay is the relevant resource limitation'. At some point if you're pushing it that far, you may for example run out of distinguishable thoughts that can be expressed by a human brain before you run out of the matter or energy to express them - reversible computation and accelerating expansion of the universe mean that the lower bound cost of computation asymptotically approaches zero as the universe ages.

So its not as simple as 'finite or infinite, its a binary choice'.

[halfeye]

Zero-sum games tend to have much harsher optimal strategies than non-zero-sum games. Details of the differences between specific kinds of growth aside, the idea that I don't have to try to take what you have because its possible for us to work together and make something new for me to have too leads to much more cooperative and humanist behavior on the whole, even from selfish actors.

When you hit a total supply bottleneck, all games turn into zero-sum. We're not at a total bottleneck yet, luckily.


And as far as asymptotic finity versus infinity, anything which isn't a bottleneck is indistinguishable from infinity in the long run. There may be a finite supply of protons in the universe, but for proton decay to be the bottleneck on your (species-level) survival, you're going to be killed by a lot of other stuff first anyways, including things like 'species genetic identity has a finite persistence scale about 25 orders of magnitude shorter' or 'species as a concept may not be able to remain relevant in the forms which can survive in a universe in which proton decay is the relevant resource limitation'. At some point if you're pushing it that far, you may for example run out of distinguishable thoughts that can be expressed by a human brain before you run out of the matter or energy to express them - reversible computation and accelerating expansion of the universe mean that the lower bound cost of computation asymptotically approaches zero as the universe ages.

So its not as simple as 'finite or infinite, its a binary choice'.

It's a long way off yet, even the Earth has more of most resources, but in the ultimate long term, the universe is apparently not infinite.

[Grytorm]

By the rules we have from the lich entry in the MM, becoming one requires an act of "unspeakable evil." Though this act is unspecified, something about making the phylactery and becoming a lich, something in the process somewhere, is an act so horrifically evil that anybody who knows of it is (at least metaphorically) unable to speak of it for how monstrous it is. It is something that willfully doing it is unquestionably evil by nearly any standard, and thus no matter how good you are otherwise, your willingness to engage in this is soul-staining.

You know it makes sense that they never tell you what it is. I mean, it is unspeakable.

Edit: You know, I didn't actually notice how long the thread was.

[NichG]

When you hit a total supply bottleneck, all games turn into zero-sum. We're not at a total bottleneck yet, luckily.

What I'm getting at is that depending on the time frame of your value system, whether the game is zero sum or not can change. If I stop counting when I die, that's definitely not zero-sum. If I stop counting when my grandchildren die, its still not zero-sum. You can choose a philosophical frame that counts some infinitely distant theoretical descendants in the reckoning, but doing so (or rather, propagating that philosophical frame now) means in essence encouraging people to choose strategies that make sense for that point of view as opposed to strategies that make sense for a point of view that considers a time horizon.

At first glance that may seem like it leads to better stewardship of resources in the long-run, but the problem is that the selfish strategies in a zero-sum worldview are pretty hostile. In a non-zero-sum worldview, there's some margin for even selfish actors to display a kind of enlightened self-interest. And the two views aren't separated by some objective correctness or incorrectness, because its a function of the subjective choice of how to count score.


It's a long way off yet, even the Earth has more of most resources, but in the ultimate long term, the universe is apparently not infinite.

The ultimate limit is the energy cost per bit erasure. Erasing bits has a lower-bound cost of kT*log(2). If T asymptotically approaches zero, then as long as you're willing to compute (infinitely) slowly, you can squeeze an arbitrary amount of computation out of a finite energy budget. The state-space will still be finite sized though (so there's an upper limit on the non-periodic sequence length that you can produce with this free computation), but those numbers are so big (since its exponential in the available mass) that all human activity to date would be an invisibly small fluctuation against it.

[Max_Killjoy]

What I'm getting at is that depending on the time frame of your value system, whether the game is zero sum or not can change. If I stop counting when I die, that's definitely not zero-sum. If I stop counting when my grandchildren die, its still not zero-sum. You can choose a philosophical frame that counts some infinitely distant theoretical descendants in the reckoning, but doing so (or rather, propagating that philosophical frame now) means in essence encouraging people to choose strategies that make sense for that point of view as opposed to strategies that make sense for a point of view that considers a time horizon.

At first glance that may seem like it leads to better stewardship of resources in the long-run, but the problem is that the selfish strategies in a zero-sum worldview are pretty hostile. In a non-zero-sum worldview, there's some margin for even selfish actors to display a kind of enlightened self-interest. And the two views aren't separated by some objective correctness or incorrectness, because its a function of the subjective choice of how to count score.


What if a society is quickly approaching a point where in some ways , the "zero sum" IS going to be within the lifetimes of "their grandchildren" ?

[Segev]

What if a society is quickly approaching a point where in some ways , the "zero sum" IS going to be within the lifetimes of "their grandchildren" ?

That's an interesting "what if" that would be a good basis for a fairly lengthy exploratory fiction. The answer is that it depends strongly on what the zero sum they're approaching looks like and why. Because ask a dozen futurists what that will look like, and you'll easily get a hundred answers.

[NichG]

What if a society is quickly approaching a point where in some ways , the "zero sum" IS going to be within the lifetimes of "their grandchildren" ?

Usually you'd get a war or other conflict (economic, legal) until it becomes a negative-sum game, at which point MAD-style threats can restabilize things. Or enough damage is caused that you have a growth-like recovery period to get back to where things were.

[ErebusVonMori]

If you treat the world as a zero-sum game, lichdom seems pretty logical, don't eat, don't drink, etc. You need for less and can plan in the kinds of longtime where reality becomes zero-sum.

[Beleriphon]

I was flipping through some old Planescape material and I realized something. Negative energy isn't energy as such, its a literal embodiment of Entropy. There's a whole plane dedicated to entropy. I have no idea the actual implications of such things are, but it is an interesting thought since the undead seem to be drawing their abilities for entropic forces, which would inherently make them at odds with things that don't want to find oblivion.

[ErebusVonMori]

It's even stranger when you consider it's one of the main methods of avoiding the obvious end result of entropy.

[Beleriphon]

It's even stranger when you consider it's one of the main methods of avoiding the obvious end result of entropy.

No kidding. But perhaps undead are using exchanging their own entropy for other people's increase in entropic forces. That sort of makes sense, it also explains why negative energy seems to create undead creatures. If enough negative energy flood a place the previously living remains gain a semblance of life by grabbing bits of energy from the world around them, which increases the entropy of those things around them. Add to that maybe a lich's home is constantly crumbling, because not because its old and it doesn't care, but because the lich is so powerful compared to a zombie it causes entropic decay in everything around it at a much faster rate than would be otherwise observed.

If we assume that's accurate liches are actively increasing the rate at which heat death of the universe occurs!

[ErebusVonMori]

Yes but positive energy counteracts that and nothing stops a lich casting those spells, a lich could in fact become a net gain of positive energy (presuming the numbers add up). Considering the whole wanted to live forever thing I'd see a lot of liches working damn hard to counteract contributing to the death of the universe.

[Beleriphon]

Yes but positive energy counteracts that and nothing stops a lich casting those spells, a lich could in fact become a net gain of positive energy (presuming the numbers add up). Considering the whole wanted to live forever thing I'd see a lot of liches working damn hard to counteract contributing to the death of the universe.

They can just move to another of the infinite universes out there. Besides, even the undead can be short sided when the increase in entropy is a difference of a billion years on a scale of trillions of years. Keeping in mind that a lich might even be aware of this, or quite frankly care since they can just bail out and find some place else. It also helps explain why demi-planes and similar non-dimensional space seem popular with spellcasters.

[ErebusVonMori]

Wouldn't those non-dimensional spaces need similar maintenance? More in fact as the total space is smaller.

[Beleriphon]

Wouldn't those non-dimensional spaces need similar maintenance? More in fact as the total space is smaller.

Probably, but it might just be a matter of making a new one and moving in once the old one is too decrepit to use. All editions of D&D include some manner of creating a demiplane at a high enough level, which seems pretty reasonable for a lich. Other undead might get some kind of entropy effect from feeding, like a vampire feeds on blood and zombies on flesh.

So, liches and undead are antithetical to live in general, which would mean a person would have to be evil to not care that much about the fate of other people. That's my theory anyways on why only evil wizards want to be liches.

[NichG]

Living things accelerate the heat death of the universe too. That's how they get to be living things. Stars do this too, as does anything that isn't in thermal equilibrium. This may be mixing real world physics and D&D physics too much, but at least in terms of the ethical conclusions - if we think liches are legitimately obligate-evil in D&D for accelerating the heat death of the universe, logically humans in real life have to be obligate-evil for doing the same. I suppose the argument would be that real humans don't have a choice, but D&D humans have some positive energy thing going where they can offset their entropy debt and liches are like that guy who refuses to recycle. But that still seems to be a pretty milquetoast kind of evil, especially because if there actually is a mechanism to offset entropy debt it's trivial to fix any damage that the lich's existence might cause (whereas in real life, not only do you have to accelerate the heat death of the universe just in order to exist, no one else can ever do anything which would get those resources back).

[Herobizkit]

Not quite. A lich is, by definition, somebody who either can justify, or does not care about doing, an unspeakably evil act. That alone already puts them into dangerous territory as regards being willing to abuse their power. On top of that, they don't have any sort of oversight (for the most part. Theoretically clerics can become liches too), so theyre the only one capable of actually restraining themselves. So its a case where the lich, no matter how well intentioned, is willing to trample their principals if pushed far enough and will "live" forever. Even if you don't subscribe to the idea that being an undead monstrosity would make it inherently harder for them to care about the living, odds are that somewhere in their infinite lifespan, something will push them to a point where they react.

Basically, in my view, becoming a Lich is like putting on the One Ring. Yeah, you could do a lot of good with it, but you've already opened a big chink in your moral armor just by accepting it, and that chink will eventually let something in.Basically this.

Even checking the MM entry for Lich, their alignment is listed as "Any Evil". To a Paladin, 'any Evil' is something that just can't be left unchecked. While the Lich might not PRESENTLY be committing Evil, everything he does is shaped around one of the Evil philosophies (probably Lawful Evil in the case of the OP's 'benevolent dictator'). It's only a matter of time before the Lich follows its nature.

Should the Paladin just run in and smash the Lich? Honestly, depends on the Paladin's alignment (no longer requiring to be neither Lawful Good nor Lawful Stupid). Should the Paladin keep a close eye on the Lich's activities, ensuring that the Lich doesn't slip into the baser urges of all free-willed undead? Yeah, I think that's fair.

[Max_Killjoy]

Living things accelerate the heat death of the universe too. That's how they get to be living things. Stars do this too, as does anything that isn't in thermal equilibrium. This may be mixing real world physics and D&D physics too much, but at least in terms of the ethical conclusions - if we think liches are legitimately obligate-evil in D&D for accelerating the heat death of the universe, logically humans in real life have to be obligate-evil for doing the same. I suppose the argument would be that real humans don't have a choice, but D&D humans have some positive energy thing going where they can offset their entropy debt and liches are like that guy who refuses to recycle. But that still seems to be a pretty milquetoast kind of evil, especially because if there actually is a mechanism to offset entropy debt it's trivial to fix any damage that the lich's existence might cause (whereas in real life, not only do you have to accelerate the heat death of the universe just in order to exist, no one else can ever do anything which would get those resources back).

I just wish "entropy" and "chaos" weren't so often misused as synonyms, or "entropy" itself misused, in common parlance. (Not saying you did.)

[halfeye]

I just wish "entropy" and "chaos" weren't so often misused as synonyms, or "entropy" itself misused, in common parlance. (Not saying you did.)

Preach it, brother.


Living things accelerate the heat death of the universe too. That's how they get to be living things. Stars do this too, as does anything that isn't in thermal equilibrium. This may be mixing real world physics and D&D physics too much, but at least in terms of the ethical conclusions - if we think liches are legitimately obligate-evil in D&D for accelerating the heat death of the universe, logically humans in real life have to be obligate-evil for doing the same. I suppose the argument would be that real humans don't have a choice, but D&D humans have some positive energy thing going where they can offset their entropy debt and liches are like that guy who refuses to recycle. But that still seems to be a pretty milquetoast kind of evil, especially because if there actually is a mechanism to offset entropy debt it's trivial to fix any damage that the lich's existence might cause (whereas in real life, not only do you have to accelerate the heat death of the universe just in order to exist, no one else can ever do anything which would get those resources back).

Perhaps liches do reverse entropy, and that's what's evil about them?

[NichG]

Perhaps liches do reverse entropy, and that's what's evil about them?

'He cast Mending! It's a sin against the natural order! Smite him!'

[Almarck]

Something to think about, but what if one interpretation of being unforgivable is by being so that you are unable or unwanting of seek repentance?

As in you literally gut a part of your soul, the part that is capable of good and thus your sins are unforgivable... because you will never ask for forgiveness.

[Segev]

Something to think about, but what if one interpretation of being unforgivable is by being so that you are unable or unwanting of seek repentance?

As in you literally gut a part of your soul, the part that is capable of good and thus your sins are unforgivable... because you will never ask for forgiveness.
I dislike this notion because it impinges on free will, and makes alignment prescriptive. While there are cases where it becomes prescriptive (Helm of Opposite Alignment, for instance), these are rare and I don't like adding more of them.

[Keltest]

I dislike this notion because it impinges on free will, and makes alignment prescriptive. While there are cases where it becomes prescriptive (Helm of Opposite Alignment, for instance), these are rare and I don't like adding more of them.

Plus, it requires that forgiveness be an act of the sinner, and not the wronged party.

[Kane0]

Hmm.
What if part of the Lichification ritual was to willingly corrupt your own soul in a particular way? Like not as a side effect of any other evil deeds you may or may not have to perform, but to manually make modifications to your own soul in order to make it usable with a Phylactery. Tampering with a soul is capital E evil, even your own, and the 'unspeakable' part is because it is evil, difficult and the specifics are unique to each particular soul.

[Segev]

Plus, it requires that forgiveness be an act of the sinner, and not the wronged party.I'm not sure I follow. Can you elaborate?


Hmm.
What if part of the Lichification ritual was to willingly corrupt your own soul in a particular way? Like not as a side effect of any other evil deeds you may or may not have to perform, but to manually make modifications to your own soul in order to make it usable with a Phylactery. Tampering with a soul is capital E evil, even your own, and the 'unspeakable' part is because it is evil, difficult and the specifics are unique to each particular soul.

This opens several questions, at least one being a matter of motivation. If you have to modify your soul to that extent, are you sure it's still "you" who becomes the lich? Or are you committing an elaborate suicide? Another suite involves questions of why, exactly, this is evil. Does it "force" you to now be evil, and thus make your alignment prescriptive? Is it just another act of "informed evil," where it's evil because, um, the rules say so, but in theory anybody who isn't just accepting the rules at face value might be hard-pressed to identify why what you've done is so bad?

[Keltest]

I'm not sure I follow. Can you elaborate?

So if I do something wrong, nothing else I do has any effect on the ability of the wronged party to forgive me (unless I like murder them or something, obviously). It might affect their willingness, but whether or not I am forgiven is entirely up to the people doing the forgiving, and I cannot render myself incapable of receiving forgiveness.

[Zanos]

So if I do something wrong, nothing else I do has any effect on the ability of the wronged party to forgive me (unless I like murder them or something, obviously). It might affect their willingness, but whether or not I am forgiven is entirely up to the people doing the forgiving, and I cannot render myself incapable of receiving forgiveness.
Forgiveness doesn't really have an effect on Good/Evil in any case. If someone refuses to forgive someone who did something wrong, it doesn't mean their decades of doing Good seeking atonement don't matter.

[Segev]

So if I do something wrong, nothing else I do has any effect on the ability of the wronged party to forgive me (unless I like murder them or something, obviously). It might affect their willingness, but whether or not I am forgiven is entirely up to the people doing the forgiving, and I cannot render myself incapable of receiving forgiveness.


Forgiveness doesn't really have an effect on Good/Evil in any case. If someone refuses to forgive someone who did something wrong, it doesn't mean their decades of doing Good seeking atonement don't matter.

Zanos's reply is good. Expanding on it a bit, the notion of redemption has little to do with whether you're forgiven or not. You can be forgiven and never do a thing to atone. Forgiveness, in this case, might be fore the forgiver's sake, to let go of the pain of what you did to wrong him.

Even if you want to atone, and the people you wronged forgive you, it may also be beyond your ability to recompense them for what you've done. Hypothetically, an act of "irredeemable" evil would be one that, even if you were forgiven by all, and you strove the rest of eternity to be a paragon of virtue and righteousness, you're getting away with something you shouldn't, if you're not punished. And no amount of punishment can really be enough, either.

That's what makes a singular act of "unspeakable" evil so hard to reconcile, because conceiving of such is so difficult.

I think the best we are likely to come up with is either something that makes it an ongoing cost of your continued being (in which case your choice to not destroy yourself and your phylactery is ongoing villainy), or is going to "merely" be something so wicked that it takes somebody who is blackest-hearted evil to do it, no matter how good his reasons. But, potentially, redeemable...if he can come to truly repent of what he's done to the point that he would never do it again, even for the same or more compelling reasons. (This is amazingly difficult, because "I do this horrible thing for good reasons, and I'll just repent for it" is setting yourself up for failure.)