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Leliel
2018-01-21, 02:41 PM
Essentially, I'm planning a 5e Planescape campaign where the main antagonist is a druid (technically a shugenja, but the 5e class is close enough to be refluffed as a cultural variant) who wants to eliminate the very concept of hatred and despair after a series of traumatic experiences involving the Grey Waste. Not Evil itself, mind-she respects the concept of greed and selfishness enough to recognize that removing that fourth of the scale, even if possible, would result in everything sentient becoming a will-less husk (see The Wheel of Time series, and the "world without a Dark One"; she has followed that to the logical extension and realized that kind of world is helpless before natural catastrophes, which happen without malice or motive, as nobody has any respect for their own existences to counter a plague or a meteor), just blind hatred and soul-devouring sorrow (she thinks they're the same thing, really; sorrow is an expression of hatred towards the self, in her myopic view).

And as the title suggests, I have her as an NG factor of the Transcendent Order; she is acting out of compassion and selflessness, and every manipulation is quietly weighed by her to check if she is losing sight of her goals in favor of what is convenient intellectually or temporally. She not only feels she's acting for the Greater Good, she's constantly acting as self-critic to avoid confusing it with Her Own Good (yes, she is still a Cipher-I feel she's part of the intellectual grouping that spends a lot of time thinking about how to not think, plus one of the ironies is that she's not actually that great at being a Cipher. I could make her an Anarchist or Bleaker though, if a philosopher that thinks a lot doesn't fit with them).

My basic sketch of her has her as a wise mentor-type; she's introspective, kind, and matronly, but she also uses her students as pawns in her ultimate scheme of creating a God of Compassion who will devour the Grey Waste and shift all of it to at least the Outlands, if not the Upper Planes.

Any other ideas?

DeTess
2018-01-22, 04:47 AM
Can you explain how this plan of hers makes her the BBEG(not familiar enough with planescape)? I can see a ton of ways how she could have become one, but constant introspection should prevent her from falling into any of the 'results at all costs' pitfalls.

Leliel
2018-01-22, 06:36 AM
Can you explain how this plan of hers makes her the BBEG(not familiar enough with planescape)? I can see a ton of ways how she could have become one, but constant introspection should prevent her from falling into any of the 'results at all costs' pitfalls.

A major theme of Planescape is balance; ultimately everything an equal and opposite reaction, and removing the Grey Waste would ultimately probably cause Elysium to vanish without something to contrast against. More importantly, however, she's underestimating how vastly applicable emotions are. Hatred can be applied to many, many things, including things like slavery or poverty or suffering. Removing depression may be better, but that could end up muting sadness as a concept, which as anyone who has watched Inside Out can tell you is probably not a good thing.

Her continuing antagonism is caused by, well, being a Cipher-the Transcendent Order is fundamentally Zen, in that they wish to act without doubt or hesitation, to unite mind and body. All well and good, except this also comes without thinking overly long on your own actions, either-to her, her tendency to angst and worry about what she's done is a flaw in her mind that's preventing her from finding inner peace. Ciphers in general, once they've decided on a course of action, refuse to be dissuaded until that action is done or impossible, as to do so would be to silence their instincts and lose sight of the Cadence of the Planes; she has chosen this action, and by the Powers, she will see it through. Ironically, it's the part of her that's a good Cipher that's driving her to upset balance so completely despite her doubts. She's not sparing enough thought to realize that, maybe, there's a reason the rest of the Order is more reactive than proactive.

gkathellar
2018-01-22, 09:04 AM
Re: thread title. It's possible. I've seen it done very, very well. I'll try and get the guy I know who wrote it over here.

I like the idea of the villain as a frankly pretty terrible Cipher - any proper Cipher who heard this plan would probably laugh their head off, and that gives it a touch of wonderful, misguided irony.


her ultimate scheme of creating a God of Compassion who will devour the Grey Waste and shift all of it to at least the Outlands, if not the Upper Planes.

I was with you up until this part - if this is Planescape, a Power simply cannot do this. Gods are vast compared to individual mortals; they are grains of sand compared to the Planes. Chunks of the Outer Planes slip into each other all the time - it's practically an occupational hazard of living in a Gate Town - but it has no broader effect because the Planes are infinite conceptual spaces. Even if she tried to do an end-run around the whole "belief shapes the planes" thing by giving a magical lobotomy to the majority of thinking beings in the cosmos, that ... well, it would require a frankly incomprehensible share of power. This is without getting into the many, many beings that would be lining up to stop her.

What might be more credible is if her plan was destined to fail in an extraordinarily catastrophic way. You can't suck the despair out of Hades because Hades is infinite - but you can do a hell of a lot of damage by spewing Essence of Hades everywhere. Likewise, you can't mass-lobotomize the cosmos, but you could dramatically underestimate the scale of the task involved and hurt a lot of people in the process of screwing up. All of which would be in keeping with the whole, "traumatized cipher" bit.


Can you explain how this plan of hers makes her the BBEG(not familiar enough with planescape)? I can see a ton of ways how she could have become one, but constant introspection should prevent her from falling into any of the 'results at all costs' pitfalls.

Because it's my sorrow and hatred, and no one has the right to take it from me.

Also. (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pAmFTmCs3IY)

weckar
2018-01-22, 09:09 AM
The easiest way I find to make a G character a BBEG is by finding opposing ideologies within that spectrum. The best example is the LG Paladin who will go to any lengths to smite the NG 'heretic' Druid.

Lacuna Caster
2018-01-22, 09:21 AM
Essentially, I'm planning a 5e Planescape campaign where the main antagonist is a druid (technically a shugenja, but the 5e class is close enough to be refluffed as a cultural variant) who wants to eliminate the very concept of hatred and despair after a series of traumatic experiences involving the Grey Waste...
Good characters that get accurate feedback on the actual consequences of their actions sooner or later need to sync up their philosophy with actual Goodness or they cease to be Good in a universe where these are tangible and objective concepts. I don't see any realistic way to work around that.

You can have Good characters acting in opposition to the PCs, absolutely. And you can certainly have Good characters turning bad. But you can't have Good be Evil.

hamishspence
2018-01-22, 09:21 AM
The easiest way I find to make a G character a BBEG is by finding opposing ideologies within that spectrum. The best example is the LG Paladin who will go to any lengths to smite the NG 'heretic' Druid.



Problem is, for Good, violence should be directed primarily at Evil (and even then, only when there is just cause). Good using violence against other Goods, is always a victory for Evil - and Good characters who do it tend not to stay Good for very long.

JeenLeen
2018-01-22, 10:55 AM
I supposed I can see this working in two ways.

1. the boss stays good. The PCs realize they need to stop her, lest her plans have unforeseen consequences (namely, whatever is linked to destroying the balance of the Planes). She fights back not out of malice, but for the good, sad that the PCs are misguided.
Cool ending option: you could have a route where the PCs convince her she is mistaken and that her actions would have horrible consequences.

2. the boss maintains her goal for the Greater Good, but she slowly starts to care less about individuals. She shifts to neutral with a good goal, but is willing to let a civilization fall. After all, she's saving the souls of the dead and establishing a better future for all.
I see this possible even with her internal checks. Perhaps she even realizes she is not Good anymore, but she's willing to sacrifice her own morality along with the rest.

#1 seems a path you'd most like. I reckon it could work pretty well if the PCs at some point start working for her, or at least become allies with her, but eventually realize she has to be stopped. However, I could see some games where the group would just decide her plan is worth it, despite the consequences.

LibraryOgre
2018-01-22, 11:44 AM
This gets especially dicey as it's taking place in the planes, where sufficient lack of care for the consequences will be a lot more evident as you get pushed to the Outlands, yourself. "Why is my fortress having rilmani flyovers?" "Maybe it's because you kept deciding that more and more people were acceptable losses in your battle against evil?"

Leliel
2018-01-22, 12:01 PM
Good characters that get accurate feedback on the actual consequences of their actions sooner or later need to sync up their philosophy with actual Goodness or they cease to be Good in a universe where these are tangible and objective concepts. I don't see any realistic way to work around that.

You can have Good characters acting in opposition to the PCs, absolutely. And you can certainly have Good characters turning bad. But you can't have Good be Evil.

An entirely valid point, except this is Planescape. As it is, Duke Rowan Darkwood wants a word.

(He's the leader of the Fated-planar Objectivists, essentially-and quite possibly the most hated man in Sigil, with ambitions of conquering it and from there becoming "benevolent" ruler of the multiverse. He's Chaotic Good.)

@ gkthellar: Excellent points. I never intend for this scheme to actually be that well thought out, and that is a good analogy. In fact, I plan on the new god (working name Chakravarti) actually being reluctant to carry out her mission, because his perfect compassion also allows him to realize she is one person and one person, even his "mother", may be bound by limited perspective.

Grek
2018-01-23, 07:57 PM
Please explain in small words to someone who isn't terribly familiar with planescape lore why the PCs might want to oppose attempts to create a God of Compassion and/or relocating the Grey Wastes to the Upper Planes. Neither of those things seem to be bad? Gods of Compassion are usually pretty nice! Are there foreseeable negative consequences that I am not aware of? Is there an opportunity cost to this where the resources could be used to do more Good elsewhere? Are the PCs unaware of the character's ultimate aims?

Pex
2018-01-23, 09:40 PM
Please explain in small words to someone who isn't terribly familiar with planescape lore why the PCs might want to oppose attempts to create a God of Compassion and/or relocating the Grey Wastes to the Upper Planes. Neither of those things seem to be bad? Gods of Compassion are usually pretty nice! Are there foreseeable negative consequences that I am not aware of? Is there an opportunity cost to this where the resources could be used to do more Good elsewhere? Are the PCs unaware of the character's ultimate aims?

Compassion could interfere with Justice. Mercy and Forgiveness have their place, but Compassion may grow so large as to forgive everything and everyone Justice is lost. The wrongdoer pays no price. Justice is taken away leaving only Vengeance.

Compassion can corrupt Charity. As Compassion demands more and more of helping others you lose yourself. The rich man becomes poor because he gave all his wealth away. Now he needs Charity. Charity consumes. Charity becomes Thievery due to being forced to give. You no longer give freely. It is taken from you.

RazorChain
2018-01-24, 01:02 AM
Now I don't adhere to the thought of BBEG at all. I'm on the antagonist school of thought and antagonist can be of all shapes and sizes as long as they stand in opposition of the protagonists.


So if the only thing the PC's need is to oppose the druid despite her intentions or alignment and she becomes the antagonist.

Luccan
2018-01-24, 01:50 AM
An entirely valid point, except this is Planescape. As it is, Duke Rowan Darkwood wants a word.

(He's the leader of the Fated-planar Objectivists, essentially-and quite possibly the most hated man in Sigil, with ambitions of conquering it and from there becoming "benevolent" ruler of the multiverse. He's Chaotic Good.)

He wants to become a multiversal dictator regardless of what anyone says and is CG? How does that even work?

Mechalich
2018-01-24, 02:11 AM
He wants to become a multiversal dictator regardless of what anyone says and is CG? How does that even work?

Rowan Darkwood started Chaotic Good, his retention of that alignment following the character's evolution through various supplements is extremely dubious. By the point of Faction War he absolutely was not good anymore (though I can't remember off the top of my head whether this is stated outright) and had clearly dropped into the neutral box in addition to having only a dubious grip on sanity.

It's important to understand, with regard to Planescape, that while the balance is important, the balance isn't good. The WoT style 'ultimate triumph of good becomes evil' (which Troy Denning put in Pages of Pain well before Sanderson got Rand al'Thor there) only happens if evil is summarily annihilated. Good can still strive to make the multiverse a better place by reducing evil. Destroying the Grey Waste would be bad, shrinking it by 99% would be good.

A character who engages in a Rowan Darkwood style plan to drastically alter the cosmos and decides the end justifies the means and the collateral damage be d***ed is no longer a good character. They may start good, but at some point the megalomania trips takes over and the character trips into neutrality. At the organizational level this is what happened to the Harmonium with the third level of Arcadia.

Mutazoia
2018-01-24, 05:32 AM
He wants to become a multiversal dictator regardless of what anyone says and is CG? How does that even work?

The path to evil is paved with good intentions.....

Slayn82
2018-01-24, 05:48 AM
You could pull a Shin Megami Tensei: in D&D, petitioners become part of a God's Realm, and those without faith on a God at best end up in Hell or Abyss, at worst are left stuck into a Wall to rot eternally until their souls are extinguished.

If you believe Gods are stealing souls to increase their own power and breaking a natural reincarnation cycle, and decided to do something, well, a lot of terrible things may happen. Worse, Demons and Devils, Eldritch abominations, etc, could even be intrinsic part of the cosmic process, and it's D&D Gods that are the artificial powers who should be broken down before all souls are used up.

Lacuna Caster
2018-01-24, 06:01 AM
An entirely valid point, except this is Planescape. As it is, Duke Rowan Darkwood wants a word.

Rowan Darkwood started Chaotic Good, his retention of that alignment following the character's evolution through various supplements is extremely dubious...

Forgive me, Leliel, but perhaps this is a standard of writing you should not be striving to imitate?

Luccan
2018-01-24, 10:48 AM
The path to evil is paved with good intentions.....

Oh, I'm aware of good characters (and people) ending up doing bad things when they meant to do good. But ultimately he would no longer be CG in D&Ds objective terms because he no longer values the freedoms or choices of others and will go to any lengths to achieve power. I was confused because it sounded like he was still considered both Chaotic and Good after that.

RazorChain
2018-01-24, 05:23 PM
He wants to become a multiversal dictator regardless of what anyone says and is CG? How does that even work?

Simple he kills enough Evil while blatantly disregarding the law and breaking his word = Chaotic Good

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-24, 05:44 PM
OP -- are you setting up a villain, or an antagonist?

Bohandas
2018-01-25, 12:52 PM
Look up a the Powerpuff Girls episode "Painbow"

icefractal
2018-01-25, 04:06 PM
Whether this works will really depend on whether the players buy into the "balance of good and evil" thing.

Also, how strongly is this "conservation of morality" effect applied in Planescape? Because if it's a guaranteed thing, that leads to odd consequences - namely that doing good is the same as doing evil, it only changes where the good/bad stuff happens. Which would mean that anyone trying to save or improve their world is ultimately selfish, trying to hoard all the supply of good for their own people.

vasilidor
2018-01-26, 11:50 AM
they could be looking for a way to change the foundations of how they see the universe working, because the cosmic balance thing requiring evil to exist in order for the universe to spin is such utter bull. And she is on a course of action that may actually succeed, terrifying all the gods universally, while in a position that is only assailable by mortals. the end result of which could render both the gods and the wall obsolete and useless. this would also terrify any paladins or clerics in the party. personally, if given that as a campaign premise I would try to get my character on her side.

gkathellar
2018-01-26, 03:02 PM
Please explain in small words to someone who isn't terribly familiar with planescape lore why the PCs might want to oppose attempts to create a God of Compassion

Depends entirely on the specifics of the word compassion in this case.


and/or relocating the Grey Wastes to the Upper Planes.

There are a phenomenal number of ways it could go badly. A few off the top of my head:
The flow of the Rivers Styx and Oceanus (which encircle the Great Wheel and flow into each other) is disrupted, causing the Planes as a whole to start dying.
The armies of Blood War are no longer able to reach each other, and so redirect their attentions upward.
Being an Upper Plane fails to change anything about Hades, and the Yugoloths suddenly have immediate access to a lot of stuff that we were better off keeping them far away from.
The selfishness, suffering and gloom that Hades embodies infects the Upper Planes as a whole.
Shaking the fulcrum of the cosmos wakes up the slumbering Draeden.
Shaking the fulcrum of the cosmos frees the Prisoner of Elysium.
Shaking the fulcrum of the cosmos frees Tharizdun.
The hole in the Wheel left behind by Hades allows the Far Realm to seep into the cosmos.
The Planes self-correct by creating a new, improved Plane of Neutral Evil that is a lot worse than the old one.


He wants to become a multiversal dictator regardless of what anyone says and is CG? How does that even work?

Because a CG alignment is not necessarily about active adherence to the principles of freedom and benevolence, but rather is often about behaving in a way that is (a) free from constraints, and (b) on a meaningful level, benevolent. The difference between a lawful dictator and a chaotic one is that the former imposes a defined order on their subjects, while the latter just imposes their will on them.


Good can still strive to make the multiverse a better place by reducing evil.

Definitely true, but just because someone is good and is trying to reduce evil doesn't necessarily mean they're not doing something extraordinarily reckless (and almost certain to backfire spectacularly) because of a pathological obsession.


Destroying the Grey Waste would be bad, shrinking it by 99% would be good.

The Outer Planes are infinite. You can't shrink infinities.

(I mean technically if we're dealing with higher-order mathematics you can have larger and smaller infinities, but I'm not sure that's relevant.)


A character who engages in a Rowan Darkwood style plan to drastically alter the cosmos and decides the end justifies the means and the collateral damage be d***ed is no longer a good character. They may start good, but at some point the megalomania trips takes over and the character trips into neutrality. At the organizational level this is what happened to the Harmonium with the third level of Arcadia.

Sure, but not every big disastrous plan is going to require that kind of behavior.


Also, how strongly is this "conservation of morality" effect applied in Planescape? Because if it's a guaranteed thing, that leads to odd consequences - namely that doing good is the same as doing evil, it only changes where the good/bad stuff happens. Which would mean that anyone trying to save or improve their world is ultimately selfish, trying to hoard all the supply of good for their own people.

It's not really applied at all, but to some degree the sheer vast scale of the Planes means that shifting the balance is virtually impossible. Even if you managed to turn every mortal in all the Spheres and all the Planes to good, it's not immediately clear that this would do anything other than screw over the Baatzeu specifically (for complex reasons). The Outer Planes have been shaped by mortal thought, but they also predate it (see also: Obyriths). So long as the possibility for evil exists, the Lower Planes will probably keep on chugging.

The other thing is that there is no full-scale conflict between good and evil on the Planes - the battle between law and chaos is older, bigger, more important, and generally of a higher priority. The Blood War is the latest iteration of that conflict, and if it tells you anything, it's also probably the smallest in scale. This is really for the best, as evil's preoccupation with an endless turf war against itself sorta liberates the Upper Planes to be an actual force for good in the multiverse rather than being devoted to an endless, degrading siege that would accomplish nothing but allow the horror and misery of the Lower Planes to seep upwards.


they could be looking for a way to change the foundations of how they see the universe working, because the cosmic balance thing requiring evil to exist in order for the universe to spin is such utter bull. And she is on a course of action that may actually succeed, terrifying all the gods universally, while in a position that is only assailable by mortals.

Evil isn't necessary for good to exist, but it springs from the same source, and so it's not going anywhere for the same reason good isn't. The Planes are metaphysical expressions of thought and the possibilities of thought, not some kind of cool plan that the gods came up with in the days of yore. They predate the gods, are more important than the gods, and are not by any means at the mercy of the gods. Unless you mean to eradicate the very concepts underpinning evil, you can't get rid of the Lower Planes.

If anything, if what you were describing were a remotely viable course of action, a fair number of the gods would probably jump to side with it.


the end result of which could render both the gods and the wall obsolete and useless.

The Wall of the Faithless isn't actually a multiversal phenomenon. It specifically applies to people living on the world of Toril, i.e. the Forgotten Realms, seemingly at the commandment of the Overdeity Ao, for his own inscrutable reasons (my theory: he's a jerk). Across most of the Planes, a non-worshipper just becomes the lowest rank of exemplar for the Outer Plane they best match the alignment of.

vasilidor
2018-01-26, 06:47 PM
the wall may not be a universal thing, but from what I understand the need for evil to exist does. It is one of the things that carries over from Dragonlance. I have an old Dragonlance book that states that individuals who grow to powerful in that area are often asked to relocate to the Forgotten Realms. And an old Forgotten Realms book that states unequivocally that yes evil is required to exist to keep the universe from imploding or some such. It is not that the lower planes would stop existing if they were no longer be required to do so, but it opens the door to their ultimate destruction. how does this relate to Planescape? they are both actually part of the same setting. the cannon of Forgotten Realms and Planescape is the first exist with in the second.

Leliel
2018-01-26, 07:00 PM
Forgive me, Leliel, but perhaps this is a standard of writing you should not be striving to imitate?

Having read Planescape...yes, it is. Believe me, Duke Darkwood may be Good, but he at no point is meant to be the protagonist. In fact, it's revealed in the Faction War adventure his time-displaced older self is trying desperately to stop his younger version after having seen where everything leads. I invoked him to point out how Planescape plays with alignment; as mentioned, Good and Evil honestly have less political ramifications than Law and Chaos, and actions carry about as equal weight as intent.

To be frank, it's also inspired by Planescape: Torment, and how the most morally repugnant of the Nameless One's past lives (long story), the Practical Incarnation, is canonically Lawful Neutral.

This is the same man who feigned romantic interest in a woman just out of teenager-dom and got her to love him, so that when she died she would become a ghost and become his scout on the Negative Energy Plane. He did this purely out of self-defense and without consideration of her at all, benevolent or malicious, not even taking joy in how he could manipulate her, so he wasn't technically being Evil. Which is to say, he was too amoral for Evil.

That kind of intention and motive causing the Alignment axis to glitch and spit out someone who acts like they should be on a different dimension is part of my inspiration-what if someone was so well-intentioned they still pinged as Good despite being a regular chessmaster eager to remake the Planes?

Mechalich
2018-01-26, 08:11 PM
The Outer Planes are infinite. You can't shrink infinities.

(I mean technically if we're dealing with higher-order mathematics you can have larger and smaller infinities, but I'm not sure that's relevant.)


The whole point of moving chunks of landscape from one plane to another is that you can alter the relative influence of the planes thereby. So while the Outer Planes are infinite, you absolutely can make them grow and shrink. Larger and smaller infinites is not only relevant, its pretty much foundational.


This is the same man who feigned romantic interest in a woman just out of teenager-dom and got her to love him, so that when she died she would become a ghost and become his scout on the Negative Energy Plane. He did this purely out of self-defense and without consideration of her at all, benevolent or malicious, not even taking joy in how he could manipulate her, so he wasn't technically being Evil. Which is to say, he was too amoral for Evil.

D&D alignment is weird, especially in Planescape. It is not calibrated to the human experience. The neutral zone on the good and evil axis is pretty large. To actually qualify as evil you have to be pretty awful. Faces of Evil - which is the key source for this purpose - defined evil roughly as: doing something that causes others to suffer purely for the suffering. You can cause literally infinite collateral damage and not be evil. The neutral alignment encompasses the hegemonizing swarm that is the Formians - the D&D version of the Borg.

The Practical Incarnation is a useful example of how extreme neutral positions are difficult for humans to take. Most people can't wall away their emotions so effectively and if they tried to do what he did would either become overcome with guilt and abandon the project - thereby moving towards good - or slide into willful sadism - thereby moving towards evil.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-26, 08:27 PM
D&D alignment is weird, especially in Planescape. It is not calibrated to the human experience. The neutral zone on the good and evil axis is pretty large. To actually qualify as evil you have to be pretty awful. Faces of Evil - which is the key source for this purpose - defined evil roughly as: doing something that causes others to suffer purely for the suffering. You can cause literally infinite collateral damage and not be evil. The neutral alignment encompasses the hegemonizing swarm that is the Formians - the D&D version of the Borg.

The Practical Incarnation is a useful example of how extreme neutral positions are difficult for humans to take. Most people can't wall away their emotions so effectively and if they tried to do what he did would either become overcome with guilt and abandon the project - thereby moving towards good - or slide into willful sadism - thereby moving towards evil.


The bolded part is odd to me, because at some point it's not "collateral damage", it's just deliberate callous disregard.

Mechalich
2018-01-26, 10:27 PM
The bolded part is odd to me, because at some point it's not "collateral damage", it's just deliberate callous disregard.

For humans, sure, but the thing about D&D's objective morality is that it does not conform to human standards.

Formians desire to conquer the entire multiverse and exterminate or enslave everything in it that is not a Formian. The lives and feelings of others are completely irrelevant to them. This is considered to be lawful neutral. On the chaotic end of the spectrum the Slaadi are completely ruled by impulse and will idly kill and eat people purely on impulse. To any society with even a semblance of organization a Slaadi walking into town has roughly the same impact as a tornado. This is considered to exemplify Chaotic Neutral.

It's worth noting that in this formulation the distribution of alignments across humans is very stilted. The overwhelming majority of humans fall into just three alignments: lawful good, lawful neutral, and neutral good. That's people who are comfortable in society and generally try to be nice (lawful good), people who are comfortable in society but are extremely self-centered and without charity (lawful neutral), and people who struggle with society but generally try to be nice (neutral good). This is like 95% of all humans (and most other common D&D races, the 2e Complete Book of Dwarves went so far as to state 'most Dwarves are Lawful Good' in plain language). There's a small group of good hearted outsiders who comprise chaotic good, and even smaller group of mentally unstable outsiders who comprise chaotic neutral, a tiny group of weird devotees of various practices who end up as neutral, and then the very small collection of horrors who deliberately seek to make the universe a terrible place filled with suffering for their own enjoyment.

So it is very easy, in Planescape to have Neutral BBEGs. They won't be 'evil' by D&D standards, but the neutral alignment can encompass a massive range of outcomes that would make pretty much every player at the table recoil in horror. Modrons conquer the multiverse, plug all organic sapient into the Matrix to use as processors to calculate Pi for all eternity - lawful neutral plan. Chaos Beasts eat the Inner Planes and reduce all reality to a formless Quark-Gluon Plasma - Chaotic Neutral outcome. The Rilmani eliminate the concept of emotion and drive and existence is reduced to a rote routine of basic survival tasks on repeat forever - True Neutral outcome. To get to 'evil' outcomes you not only have to take cosmic horror, you have to add cosmic torture to it.

The lower planes are the suck: Acheron is all of the horrors, indignities, and absolute pointlessness of the worst wars on repeat, forever, and everyone involved knows victory is impossible but they have to keep fighting as hard as they can anyway; Baator is the ultimate hierarchy of torment. Those at the bottom are abused to the max by those on top who are abused by those on top of them and on and on and the cycle of abuse and paranoia can never be stopped for a second because they you fail to meet goals and you get audited, tortured and thrown back to the bottom; Gehenna is that everything is a pawn in schemes that have no purpose and go nowhere and cannot be advanced with actual progress as an impossibility. There is no such thing as security - literally there is no stable ground in the entire plane everything is sloped. There is only constant paranoia to stay in one place, never to advance; The Grey Waste is abject soul crushing despair, without relief, forever. All personality, all memory, all emotion is lost until there is only the perpetual all of suffering; Carceri is every possible indignity of imprisonment with no possibility of escape and the cruelest jailers imaginable without end; The Abyss is every cruelty imaginable visited upon you personally and every time one becomes familiar enough that you build any resistance or ennui they switch to a new one. Pandemonium is madness, with all its horrors, visited upon everything from the air to the stones to the people.

And the creatures of the lower planes are beings that think each of the places where they live is a paradise and they want to make everything in the universe just like that. A neutral annihilation that just brings about effective oblivion is considered substantially less awful.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-26, 10:46 PM
For humans, sure, but the thing about D&D's objective morality is that it does not conform to human standards.

Formians desire to conquer the entire multiverse and exterminate or enslave everything in it that is not a Formian. The lives and feelings of others are completely irrelevant to them. This is considered to be lawful neutral. On the chaotic end of the spectrum the Slaadi are completely ruled by impulse and will idly kill and eat people purely on impulse. To any society with even a semblance of organization a Slaadi walking into town has roughly the same impact as a tornado. This is considered to exemplify Chaotic Neutral.


And yet some posters give me crap for calling the supposed "objective morality" of D&D's Alignment a horror show... while here we have two versions of straight-up evil, that supposedly aren't under that system.

If this were just individuals or cultures professing something that looked like Alignment as their subjective take on morality, that would be interesting. But a fictional universe that operates on that standard as the objective truth of morality puts anything Lovecraft wrote about an alien and malignant universe to shame.

Mechalich
2018-01-26, 11:44 PM
And yet some posters give me crap for calling the supposed "objective morality" of D&D's Alignment a horror show... while here we have two versions of straight-up evil, that supposedly aren't under that system.

If this were just individuals or cultures professing something that looked like Alignment as their subjective take on morality, that would be interesting. But a fictional universe that operates on that standard as the objective truth of morality puts anything Lovecraft wrote about an alien and malignant universe to shame.

Well...you have to consider the question: is a natural disaster evil?

If a tornado annihilates your town you wouldn't ascribe malice to it. A Slaad is much the same, it just happens to walk and talk. Likewise, if humans eventually invent nanotech that turns the entire world into Grey Goo, would you consider that to have malice? Formians are the same they just walk and communicate telepathically.

There's plenty of horrifying things in the universe, like Ichneumonid Wasps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichneumonidae) (check the reproduction section). Are these evil? D&D says no. D&D starts from the point that natural phenomena - which has been interpreted to be anything that happens without sapient direction - is always neutral. The multiverse is not just, it is merely balanced between good and evil; each of which is strictly defined and requires intent. I wouldn't say this is crueler than Lovecraft, it's just taking a very modern moral standard and applying it to a fantasy universe straight up. For instance, would you consider The Borg to be evil? The only different between the Borg and the Formians is that one is a bunch of humanoids covered in cybernetics and the other is tauric ants. Their morality is exactly the same.

Planescape was fairly upfront about this. Several of the Factions in Planescape considered the multiverse to be unacceptably horrific and in need of radical alteration. The Athar believed the gods had ruined it and need to be removed. The Godsmen believed this is all a test and eventually you'll end up in a position (divinity) where things no longer suck. The Dustmen believed the multiverse was death or a crummy afterlife and only achieving True Death allowed escape from the awful.

And then there's the Bleak Cabal, who would absolutely agree with you that the multiverse was awful and nonsensical and they mostly sunk into depression and madness as a result.

Planescape lore featured a number of extreme plots launched by various groups trying to 'break the system' in some way. Rowan Darkwood's scheme is only one of them. The divine plot in Pages of Pain to steal the Lady of Pain's power is another. There was an adventure plot in which a group tried to make the gears of Mechanus stop turning (it was left unresolved what the GM should say if this wasn't stopped) and there were various other schemes to make the multiverse crack like an egg. Players were usually expected to side with the status quo - because that's how TTRPGs tend to work, but there's nothing to say that the people trying to radically reshape the multiverse were wrong. Rowan Darkwood's plan to replace the Lady with a better person isn't an evil idea in principle, it's just that he didn't think it through.

'The world without a Dark One' example the OP made from WoT is quite relevant. In Planescape the equivalent is the 'multiverse without pain' since the Lady of Pain is the source of Pain in the multiverse. In that case, the annihilation of the Dark One results in a world without will, but restricting the Dark One by re-sealing the Bore results in a world that is measurably less evil in every way. In the context of the OPs scenario, attempting to destroy the Grey Waste means a failure to recognize this distinction and is a neutral viewpoint. At the same time, seeking to, for example, annihilate evil Yugoloth in the Grey Waste - which would massively improve life there but would not harm the greater machinery of the multiverse - would be a viable plan for a good character.

Max_Killjoy
2018-01-26, 11:53 PM
The Formians and Slaad, at least, aren't "acts of nature", they can evidently think and communicate. They cease being "disasters" at that point.

Leliel
2018-01-27, 01:04 AM
The Formians and Slaad, at least, aren't "acts of nature", they can evidently think and communicate. They cease being "disasters" at that point.

So can wolves. Doesn't mean the wolf hates you when it eats you, it's just instinct and hunger. Wolves hunt, storms blow, slaadi reproduce. In fact, it involves even less malice for the slaadi in 5e, since the slaad is the product of a Chaotic autoimmune response against an unacceptable contamination by Law-they make slaadi out of others to make that damn Spawning Stone one day disappear. On the Law side, Formians are only part of the deal-there's that race of outsiders that personify conformity and reproduce by merging their outer shells with other sentients to make them "perfect", ie more of themselves.

Planescape is cynical about all spokes on the alignment wheel and how inhuman they get, is what we are saying.

Mechalich
2018-01-27, 01:52 AM
Planescape is cynical about all spokes on the alignment wheel and how inhuman they get, is what we are saying.

I'm not sure if cynicism is the right view. Planescape - which really represents the only attempt by D&D writers to grapple with the ethical implications of the universe that accreted into existence from the 70s to the 90s - rolls with the weirdness of imposing an objective standard of morality upon a universe that contains all these dramatically inhuman viewpoints and has to acknowledge them all. Rather than attempt to reign in the madness of the kitchen sink gone wild Planescape chose to largely ignore ethical issues entirely and to layer on an entirely new philosophical aspect - the Factions - to the game instead. They wanted to create a scenario where you could have meaningful adventures without caring about alignment. This only worked partially at best. The good-aligned planes ended up being nice, happy, and crushingly boring. Copious amounts of ink were spilled with regard to the lower planes instead. This continued in 3e and even into Pathfinder (which keeps adding more and more types of evil outsider to its bestiaries like they have some sort of fiend redundancy fetish).

Personally I attribute many of the ethical choices that were made in Planescape to the influence of Troy Denning. He seems to really believe this stuff. Not only does it show up - extremely blatantly since he puts words into the Lady of Pain's thoughts - in Pages of Pain where it at least nominally belongs, but he put the same material into the Forgotten Realms (in Crucible: the Trial of Cyric the Mad) and into Star Wars (in various novels, notably the Dark Nest Trilogy and also Crucible) where it absolutely did not belong.

One thing that this discussion illustrates is how D&D alignment is a mess and has extremely high barriers to entry. Planescape sorted out a system that is largely coherent but you have to wade into the weeds to get there and it is very much not intuitive, and later editions didn't respect it.


Anyway, to get back to the original question, I would suggest that you could have their character be the ultimate opposition to the party with only a slight modification to your plan. For example, the plan to create a god of compassion makes sense if you formed that god (or goddess) out of energy taken from the Grey Waste - say by the summary annihilation of all Night Hags or something. You could produce unforeseen consequences by having said god form in the Grey Waste, but instead of grabbing a big bite of the plane and hauling it back to Elysium or something, the divine power briefly canceled the despair of the Grey Waste and thereby dumped countless eons of forgotten suffering back onto the souls trapped there. This would cause the plane to shatter as the renewed awareness sends souls - and the patch of real estate they occupy - blasting across to various other lower planes depending on the form of their torment. Who knows what the ultimate result would be, maybe the planes realign completely, but it probably wouldn't benefit the cause of good.

You still have the druid character be actually good, just very reckless (which to me fits the Ciphers just fine, but I don't slurp that faction the way so many Planescape writers clearly did) and unwilling to consider unintended consequences of messing with the planes in such a dramatic way. Such a character would like, as her planes became known, face serious attacks from both Inevitables and Rilmani though, so she'd better be holed up some place safe.

vasilidor
2018-01-27, 11:19 PM
the thing is, the scariest of human monsters in history believed that what they were doing was right. so, what if, in this scenario, she actually is?
just a thought.

gkathellar
2018-01-29, 12:21 PM
And yet some posters give me crap for calling the supposed "objective morality" of D&D's Alignment a horror show... while here we have two versions of straight-up evil, that supposedly aren't under that system.

If this were just individuals or cultures professing something that looked like Alignment as their subjective take on morality, that would be interesting. But a fictional universe that operates on that standard as the objective truth of morality puts anything Lovecraft wrote about an alien and malignant universe to shame.

Bear in mind that law and chaos are, in their most abstract iterations, about form/hierarchy vs. formlessness/possibility. Law is about saying, "here's the Way Things Are/Should Be/Must Be," whereas Chaos rejects notions of structure or absolute truth (arguably the multiverse as a whole is tilted towards law, since Things Exist instead of Peanut Boson Hapsburg Carnival). Planar creatures, especially those of law and chaos, tend to represent extreme and bizarre versions of these basic ideas.

Beings like Formians are disruptive because they're ants at a picnic their vision of Right Action often conflicts with the way other beings live, to the point that even Modrons - the exemplars of Lawful Neutral - have mostly hostile interactions with them. But they're not really malign, just uncaring and self-centered, and they can absolutely be reasoned with from their own perspective.

Slaad, on the other hand, are destructive not for any particular reason, but rather because their behavior has very little guiding logic besides, "lolfrogs." Their version of chaos is also especially malignant because they're sort of broken, as a group - slaad are less "chaos as it truly is" and more "chaos as law sees it" due to the betrayal of one of their predecessors and the interference of Primus.