"Usually" [Good/Evil/Lawful/Chaotic]

[Pandaren]

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It's often come up as a subject of conversation when any creature in the monster manual or other printed source has "often" or "usually" as their alignment instead of "always". Some races seem more questionable to not be of that alignment than others, examples being the Lumi ("Usually Lawful") who's whole race's sole goal for the future is to eradicate decievers and unlawful creatures in the plane, and say, kobolds("usually lawful evil") who just really want to be left to their own devices.

But the actual question is, you as the DM, would you allow a character to be contrary to their race's alignment, I have no doubt many of you will say yes but, what if it's to the point of insanity. (Like a negative energy wielding, chaotic Lumi; or an evil nymph, or a good demon/devil.)

[Flickerdart]

Usually doesn't mean Always. That's why you can have Good mummies, for one. Then again, Drizz't should be Always Evil...

I do believe that Fiends with the [Evil] subtype aren't allowed to be Good, but I'm not sure. There was that one Succubus Paladin, after all.

[Pandaren]

I believe there's something about evil outsiders in Book of Exalted Deeds, but my main concern is, while some members of a race may stray one step off, how possible are some of the alignments for a certain race, I'm assuming usually would mean around at least 90% of the race.

[monty]

"Usually" means that it's the dominant alignment in their society (personally, I think humans should be Usually Evil). "Always" means that, with rare exceptions (something like one in a million, I think), they all are.

[Morty]

It's not really a matter of interpretation. I don't have MM at hand right now, but I belive "often" means that 40%-50% of the race is of given alignment and "usually" means that above 50% is of given alignment. Even if I'm wrong, there are numbers given.

[Vorpal Soda]

As I understand, it's like this:

Often Alignment X: Less than 50% are Alignment X, but it's still the most common alignment.

Usually Alignment X: More than 50% are Alignment X.

Always Alignment X: Exceptions simply cannot happen under any circumstance that could be considered even vaguely natural. It's possible to cause exceptions by screwing with magic if circumstances are favorable, but getting your left eyeball replaced with a portal to the plane of elemental fire is probably just as likely.

[Baron Corm]

Always is reserved for things like Outsiders, Constructs, or Animals, who are that alignment simply because of what they are. A Clay Golem must be Neutral because it has no free will.

Usually means that most creatures of that type are that alignment, but since it's not intrinsic in their nature, there could be a rogue creature. Kobolds are almost all Lawful Evil due to their upbringing, but they do have free will and could feasibly go against their society.

Often means that the race leans in that direction, but the creatures are still very varied. Many dwarves are Lawful Good, but it wouldn't be too strange to find even a Chaotic Evil dwarf.

[Pandaren]

Wouldn't it be incredibly hard to find an unlawful Lumi though, even with the "usually". As stated their whole society is based on law (and lawful outsiders to boot), and yet they only have a "usually".

There are a few others examples where the alignmeny is somewhat skewed, just need to remember what they were.

[Baron Corm]

What book are Lumi in? If they're Outsiders [Lawful] it's probably a mistake or typo...

[SurlySeraph]

I've seen DMs not only allow PC characters of unusual alignments, but plenty of NPCs. A few times this was done primarily to put the party off guard. Off guard as in "The Flumph that has been staring at the paladin for the past 18 seconds suddenly stabs him in the back. Make a Fortitude save"


Always Alignment X: Exceptions simply cannot happen under any circumstance that could be considered even vaguely natural. It's possible to cause exceptions by screwing with magic if circumstances are favorable, but getting your left eyeball replaced with a portal to the plane of elemental fire is probably just as likely.

Thank you. I now have my next character. :smallbiggrin:

[Pandaren]

What book are Lumi in? If they're Outsiders [Lawful] it's probably a mistake or typo...

MM3

3.5 of course.

[Baron Corm]

Ok, so the Lumi is an Outsider without a subtype. That means it doesn't have to be/can't really be "Always". Since it's essentially an Outsider representing positive energy, I would probably give it the Good subtype and have it be Always Good. I don't really see how it is more Lawful than Good but that's really up to the creator. Of course all of these rules can be overruled by a DM.

Seeing as how the lumi are described as being a race of warriors and healers, I would assume that most of them are the "Lumi Crusader" type, and only a few of the "Lumi"s exist, probably back at home as farmers or artisans or whatever; lumis who don't care that much about "the light". So most of the race is "Usually". That's my interpretation at least.

[Thurbane]

Usually doesn't mean Always. That's why you can have Good mummies, for one. Then again, Drizz't should be Always Evil...
In the SRD, the sample 1st level Drow Warrior is listed as "Usually neutral evil"...

[Flickerdart]

In the SRD, the sample 1st level Drow Warrior is listed as "Usually neutral evil"...
Really? I thought Drow were Always...

[monty]

Since it's essentially an Outsider representing positive energy, I would probably give it the Good subtype and have it be Always Good.

Positive energy != Good. It's fine the way it is, really. Just because the society is incredibly Lawful doesn't mean every individual has to be.

[Jack Zander]

Saying Lumi's all must be lawful is like saying that every Japanese person has honor. Sure, most all of them do due to their society, but not 100% of them.

[RPGuru1331]

If "Always" means exactly what it says on the tin, why did Wizards release a Succubus Paladin?

[monty]

If "Always" means exactly what it says on the tin, why did Wizards release a Succubus Paladin?

Gratuitous fan service?

This forum requires that you wait 60 seconds between posts. Please try again in 1 seconds.

[SadisticFishing]

Always is 99.999%. There may be one Lawful Good Red Dragon. It's extremely unlikely, but there may be one... But just one.

The reason the Lumi says Usually is *probably* because they're Usually Lawful Neutral, but ALWAYS lawful - so it should say Any Lawful. But I don't have the MM3 on me.

[Devils_Advocate]

Psychological unity can give a race a strong tendency towards an alignment without tying them down to that alignment. For example, suppose that kobolds are fundamentally very vengeful. Their tendency to respond to any perceived slight with disproportionate retribution then makes them Evil and their resulting unwillingness to slight their fellow kobolds makes them Lawful. But you could still have a Chaotic Good kobold who refuses to take crap from anyone and fights those who would unjustifiably repress individual liberty, because he's still vengeful, just in an atypical way.


Wouldn't it be incredibly hard to find an unlawful Lumi though, even with the "usually". As stated their whole society is based on law (and lawful outsiders to boot), and yet they only have a "usually".
That doesn't mean that there are no Lumi who hate living in a restrictive, regimented society... and maybe run away to become adventurers. :smallamused:

They may still prize honesty and despise deception, especially if you decide that that hat (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats) is a fundamental aspect of their racial psychology: the cause, not the effect, of cultural values. But if they can do that in a Chaotic way (Devotion to uncovering all truth can damn well bring an individual into conflict with tradition and authority), I say so be it! Just because they share that value doesn't mean that they have to agree with and support the ways their society promotes it.

Also, lumi are "Often Lawful Neutral" and Lumi Crusaders are "Usually Lawful Neutral". The rest could all be either Lawful Good or Lawful Evil, and those statements would still be accurate. They could be e.g. 40% LG, 45% LN, 15% LE.

Arguably they should give a more detailed breakdown. You could give the percentage of the race that falls into each alignment. But, as mentioned above, I would prefer not to tie most races directly to alignment in particular. (For outsiders that specifically embody alignments, of course it makes sense to make them consistently of one alignment.)

[Baron Corm]

Positive energy != Good.

Debatable. Animate Dead is Evil, but Inflict Wounds isn't... most people don't play that energy is tied to alignments but it is the way that it is usually done in D&D books that I've read. Personally, I prefer the unaligned version, but that's just how I see it done.

[Frosty]

I'm playing a LG Succubus Paladin right now. It's fun to mess with the Detect <alignment> line of spells. Although it is less fun to have other paladins accidentally Smite Evil on you.

[monty]

Debatable. Animate Dead is Evil, but Inflict Wounds isn't... most people don't play that energy is tied to alignments but it is the way that it is usually done in D&D books that I've read. Personally, I prefer the unaligned version, but that's just how I see it done.

The positive and negative energy planes have no alignment descriptors. The planes are literally (literally!) made of positive and negative energy. Positive and negative energy have no alignment. QED.

[Baron Corm]

The positive and negative energy planes have no alignment descriptors. The planes are literally (literally!) made of positive and negative energy. Positive and negative energy have no alignment. QED.

Just because the positive plane is "positive aligned" instead of "good aligned" doesn't mean that positive energy isn't good. Evil creatures tend to have negative energy effects while Good ones have positive energy effects. To my knowledge it hasn't been strictly defined either way, and various authors across many books define it in different ways. I'm still leaving it up in the air.

[Starbuck_II]

Just because the positive plane is "positive aligned" instead of "good aligned" doesn't mean that positive energy isn't good. Evil creatures tend to have negative energy effects while Good ones have positive energy effects. To my knowledge it hasn't been strictly defined either way, and various authors across many books define it in different ways. I'm still leaving it up in the air.

Just because most evil creature has fire effects (they do check out the Monster Manual again: Red Dragon, Hell Hound, etc) ands most good doesn't: Does not make fire evil.

Same for Positive energy.

[Baron Corm]

Just because most evil creature has fire effects (they do check out the Monster Manual again: Red Dragon, Hell Hound, etc) ands most good doesn't: Does not make fire evil.

Same for Positive energy.

Damn. And all along I was secretly trying to prove that fire was evil.

Kidding aside, all I said is that it's a reasonable belief. That is not disprovable. I'm not arguing for it one way or another. So stop QEDing me. This is like trying to prove god doesn't exist. It will lead nowhere.

[mikeejimbo]

... or an evil nymph ...

Evil nymphs make perfect sense to me, judging from the source material.

[Roderick_BR]

Really? I thought Drow were Always...
No, it's only "Usually neutral evil". They even have a good deity.

@Vorpal Soda: Why can't rare exceptions happen? Several official characters exists in D&D's canon, like the mentioned paladin sucubus. Granted, her story was written to make her fall, but then again we have the puritian sucubus in the PC game Torment.

I actually tried to write a session based on it once.

Some heavenly angel asks the PC for help to destroy a demon enslaving a town. After they defeat the demon, they find out the angel was the enslaver, and the demon was the one defending the village, and a now weakened party needs to fight the angel, that feigned to be hurt so he could fall back and save his forces.
That story was actually based on an old comic book I read, with an evil knight, and a good sorcerer.

[Devils_Advocate]

Kidding aside, all I said is that it's a reasonable belief. That is not disprovable.
No. There may be insufficient evidence to demonstrate that positive energy isn't Good, but there's sufficient evidence to demonstrate that it's not reasonable to believe it Good.

The lumi are beings of positive energy. They're strongly associated with positive energy. Yet they're most often Lawful Neutral, not Good. That's contrary evidence for the claim that positive energy is Good. It's not enough to prove that it isn't Good, but it is enough to make it unreasonable to think it Good, barring stronger evidence for that position.

You're probably operating under the mistaken reasoning that because negative energy is ambiguously Evil, that must make positive energy just as ambiguously Good. Sorry, no. Just because they're opposed forces doesn't mean that they're exact opposites that are perfect mirrors of each other. If they were, then you'd have as many positive-energy undead and negative-energy living creatures as negative-energy undead and positive-energy living creatures. And while those things exist (deathless, Tomb-tainted Soul feat), they're rare. So negative and positive energy aren't "the same, except opposite." It's like how there presumably has to be some sort of asymmetry between matter and antimatter for the universe to be able to have a surplus of matter.

My analysis of this issue: Negative energy has a natural affinity for Evil, but it isn't inherently Evil. Positive energy has a far weaker affinity for Good, if it has one at all. This isn't an official explanation, but it's the only one I've seen that comes close to fitting all of the rules.

[TheCountAlucard]

I like the way Vorpal Soda put it, but I'd also say that most of the "Often" creatures that aren't of the listed alignment are within two steps of it, and "Usually" creatures are within a step of it.

[SurlySeraph]

Really? I thought Drow were Always...

They can also be Chaotic Good. :smalltongue:


My analysis of this issue: Negative energy has a natural affinity for Evil, but it isn't inherently Evil. Positive energy has a far weaker affinity for Good, if it has one at all. This isn't an official explanation, but it's the only one I've seen that comes close to fitting all of the rules.

My interpretation is that negative energy is inherently destructive and positive energy inherently creative (though there is the whole Death By Awesome thing if you spend to long on the Plane of Positive Energy). Since evil beings generally prefer to destroy things rather than create things, they use negative energy more often than positive energy.

[monty]

Just because the positive plane is "positive aligned" instead of "good aligned" doesn't mean that positive energy isn't good. Evil creatures tend to have negative energy effects while Good ones have positive energy effects. To my knowledge it hasn't been strictly defined either way, and various authors across many books define it in different ways. I'm still leaving it up in the air.

Association means nothing. Criminals tend to use guns, while non-criminals tend to not use guns. Are guns evil?

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Association means nothing. Criminals tend to use guns, while non-criminals tend to not use guns. Are guns evil?As a non-criminal from Texas, i object to this.

Also, the whole negative-energy deal is just as bad as Undead on the rules. It really deserves it's own thread.

[monty]

As a non-criminal from Texas, i object to this.

"Tend to." On average. Take, for example, Canada, where very few people own guns.

[DrakebloodIV]

Logically speaking though, positive and negative energy are just tools to an end. Neither can be considered bound to an allignment seeing as both of means of achieving the same goal. Good undead, although rare, do exist and are considered such in spite of the fact that they suffer the same negative effects from Positive energy spells. In fact the idea that either form of energy is inherently an allignment rather rankles me. You dont see someone going around claiming that any form of energy is enherently logical or chaiotic. If it was as such you would be branding someone for the core source of power from which their existance is wrought. Perhaps the better question is how do we assume that each form of energy is good or bad. Who's to even say that 'negative' energy is negative, maybe we just view it as such because of our common assiciation with positive energy, a fear of the unknown, perhaps?

[AslanCross]

I generally follow the prescribed alignments, but certain groups may deviate from the norm by one step. For example, I'm sure one would be able to find, within a regular hobgoblin (LE) tribe a cadre of berserkers who are NE---they're too wild to really be controlled by the system, yet know enough to act in line in fear of violent retribution.

On the other hand, you could have certain racist elven supremacists (the Eldreth Veluuthra from Forgotten Realms) who are CN to CE.

With outsiders I think it's another deal altogether. They're the physical embodiments of ideologies, so I don't think it makes sense to have truly redeemed fiends. However, there seems to be a double standard here, as it's much easier to imagine fallen celestials---Malkizid, for example.

If one absolutely has to redeem a fiend or corrupt a celestial, I would think it best to have it retain its original abilities and just switch all of its alignment-specific statistics to work for the opposite alignment. This happens because they no longer embody their previous ideology. This does not necessarily change their biology (although seeing a redeem Paerilyon would be really strange---how does a bloated, perfumed "transvestite" (it's actually genderless) fiend appear redeemed? This goes back to how silly the idea of redemption is among creatures that are literally, biologically shaped by the corruption or righteousness they embody.

[Roderick_BR]

Association means nothing. Criminals tend to use guns, while non-criminals tend to not use guns. Are guns evil?
Guns are man-made objects, not manifestation of superior powers in form of unleashed mystic energies that can strengthen or harm living beings or creatures animated by one of these energies.
Guns are nothing more than tools, like picking up a hammer to build a house or break a window.

So, yeah, "association" still applies here.

[BRC]

I just throw out racial alignments (On the Moral axis anyway) for anything except outsiders. For example, my current campaign includes a LN Ogre mafia don.

[Starbuck_II]

The lumi are beings of positive energy. They're strongly associated with positive energy. Yet they're most often Lawful Neutral, not Good. That's contrary evidence for the claim that positive energy is Good. It's not enough to prove that it isn't Good, but it is enough to make it unreasonable to think it Good, barring stronger evidence for that position.


Heck, if you read the Lumi text: they are planning genocide for ages on the material realm.
They ususlly go in small groups, but are gearing up for a major invasion of the world.
Sure, they maybe only genociding evil, but that means they will kill only a 1/3rd of the world.
No redemption: they don't believe in it.

They almost as bad as Reth Dekala: they are cursed until they kill their own ancestors/relatives on the material plane.
They are usually LE because of this. But at least they have a reason they want to kill their people unlike Lumis.

[Baron Corm]

I realize that your name is Devils_Advocate but for some reason I am responding to you anyway.


No.

Yes.


There may be insufficient evidence to demonstrate that positive energy isn't Good, but there's sufficient evidence to demonstrate that it's not reasonable to believe it Good.

Seeing as how "reasonable" is completely in the eyes of the beholder, there is no way you could know what it would take to demonstrate it to me, or any given person.


The lumi are beings of positive energy.

Right.


They're strongly associated with positive energy.

Correct.


Yet they're most often Lawful Neutral, not Good. That's contrary evidence for the claim that positive energy is Good. It's not enough to prove that it isn't Good, but it is enough to make it unreasonable to think it Good, barring stronger evidence for that position.

I already said that I'm not sure they are rightfully listed as LN (or, taking Starbuck_II's genocide observation into account, that they are rightfully listed as beings of positive energy). WotC sometimes makes mistakes. I know, hard to believe. My reasoning for this was that positive energy is sometimes portrayed as a Good thing. Using the lumi entry to disprove this, in these circumstances, cannot be done.


You're probably operating under the mistaken reasoning that because negative energy is ambiguously Evil, that must make positive energy just as ambiguously Good.

Hold on...


Sorry, no.

Sorry, yes. Ah, that felt good.


Just because they're opposed forces doesn't mean that they're exact opposites that are perfect mirrors of each other. If they were, then you'd have as many positive-energy undead and negative-energy living creatures as negative-energy undead and positive-energy living creatures. And while those things exist (deathless, Tomb-tainted Soul feat), they're rare. So negative and positive energy aren't "the same, except opposite." It's like how there presumably has to be some sort of asymmetry between matter and antimatter for the universe to be able to have a surplus of matter.

Having different amounts is not the same as being different.


My analysis of this issue: Negative energy has a natural affinity for Evil, but it isn't inherently Evil. Positive energy has a far weaker affinity for Good, if it has one at all. This isn't an official explanation, but it's the only one I've seen that comes close to fitting all of the rules.

Positive energy is seen less in monsters because there are less Good monsters because the PCs are supposed to be Good. The same thing applies to the "fire is evil" thing above.

[RPGuru1331]

I realize that your name is Devils_Advocate but for some reason I am responding to you anyway.

Out of vague curiosity, do you know the etymology of "Devil's Advocate"?


I already said that I'm not sure they are rightfully listed as LN (or, taking Starbuck_II's genocide observation into account, that they are rightfully listed as beings of positive energy). WotC sometimes makes mistakes. I know, hard to believe. My reasoning for this was that positive energy is sometimes portrayed as a Good thing. Using the lumi entry to disprove this, in these circumstances, cannot be done.

Is it not possible that you're mistaken? WotC makes mistakes, this is true, but the level of 'mistakes' that would need to be necessary for Lumi to not be Positive Energy creatures is beyond the scope of normal RPG material typos.

[Starbuck_II]

I already said that I'm not sure they are rightfully listed as LN (or, taking Starbuck_II's genocide observation into account, that they are rightfully listed as beings of positive energy). WotC sometimes makes mistakes. I know, hard to believe. My reasoning for this was that positive energy is sometimes portrayed as a Good thing. Using the lumi entry to disprove this, in these circumstances, cannot be done.

Oh, it gets better.
Read page 98 of MM3.
"They think nothing of slaying those who offend their morality".
Yes, and that includes being honest

They want to kill you if you lie!
In their towns: That is a capital punishment. Heck deception is regarded as the worst crime!

I was wrong I'll admit: it isn't a genocide of evil: they want kill all dishonest people.

[chiasaur11]

"Tend to." On average. Take, for example, Canada, where very few people own guns.

Are you trying to say Canada isn't pure evil?

I may need to rethink my whole worldview.

[Doug Lampert]

As I understand, it's like this:

Often Alignment X: Less than 50% are Alignment X, but it's still the most common alignment.

Usually Alignment X: More than 50% are Alignment X.

Always Alignment X: Exceptions simply cannot happen under any circumstance that could be considered even vaguely natural. It's possible to cause exceptions by screwing with magic if circumstances are favorable, but getting your left eyeball replaced with a portal to the plane of elemental fire is probably just as likely.

According to both the 3.0 and 3.5 MM text explaining what those entries mean you are wrong about always. The definitions are in both books in the introductory material on how to read a MM entry.

Always means that exceptions are very rare, 1 in a million or so and maybe as few as a single creature, but exceptions are still clearly allowed (in fact IIRC the text implies that effectively all races have at least one exception, but I assume that's just poor writing).

Creatures not capable of moral choice are neutral (except some undead in 3.5, which is stupid but doesn't really fit in this thread). Thus having ANY alignment other than Nuetral typically means that the creature is capable of moral choice, and can choose to be a different alignment. Always means the default alignment is built in as the race's default by its basic nature, but the individual creature could concievably still choose differently.

IIRC the FAQ includes a section on the interactions of Alignment subtypes and a creature's actual alignment which discusses creatures with the subtype and without the alignment. Meaning that even for outsiders with a subtype, made of the very substance of their alignment, they can choose differently and have a different alignment. [As someone else mentioned, the LG succubus will still DETECT as Evil, in fact, by the book, if she has enough levels her Paladin levels make her detect as a stronger evil than a typical Succubus.]

[Yukitsu]

"Tend to." On average. Take, for example, Canada, where very few people own guns.

As a Canadian non-criminal gun owner, I take offense to this. :smallamused:

[Vorpal Soda]

I may be wrong in my understanding, but whilst positive energy is more commonly used for good, and negative energy is more commonly used for evil, they canonically aren't actually purely good or evil energies.

The Crypt Thing in AD&D at least, isn't evil (Unsure about later editions though). It's a neutral intellegent undead who uses spells guard the crypt/tomb/grave it was created to protect, and it's vulnerable to anything that normally harms undead. They can be created by a wizard, or rarely by an ancestor choosing to return from the afterlife to protect their place of rest. Of course, Crypt Things are quite different from other undead, as they tend not to cut a bloody swathe through commoner towns.

Just out of interest, what actually caused the Succubus Paladin to turn good? I assumed that Always Alignment X meant that magically forced alignment change was the only way you could get an exception, which may or may not have been the case with the Succubus Paladin.

I personally dislike the idea of an entire sapient race being defined as always one certain alignment. Actually, the idea of an entire sapient race having one specific thing in common annoys me generally, wether it's always being evil, always being arrogant and stuck up, or always being miners and blacksmiths. Although if that one trait is that the whole race has is that they always wear fake bunny ears into battle, and that losing your bunny ears is a sign of great shame and thus requires a long period of attonment, I'd be willing to accept that.

[chiasaur11]

I may be wrong in my understanding, but whilst positive energy is more commonly used for good, and negative energy is more commonly used for evil, they canonically aren't actually purely good or evil energies.

The Crypt Thing in AD&D at least, isn't evil (Unsure about later editions though). It's a neutral intellegent undead who uses spells guard the crypt/tomb/grave it was created to protect, and it's vulnerable to anything that normally harms undead. They can be created by a wizard, or rarely by an ancestor choosing to return from the afterlife to protect their place of rest. Of course, Crypt Things are quite different from other undead, as they tend not to cut a bloody swathe through commoner towns.

Just out of interest, what actually caused the Succubus Paladin to turn good? I assumed that Always Alignment X meant that magically forced alignment change was the only way you could get an exception, which may or may not have been the case with the Succubus Paladin.

I personally dislike the idea of an entire sapient race being defined as always one certain alignment. Actually, the idea of an entire sapient race having one specific thing in common annoys me generally, wether it's always being evil, always being arrogant and stuck up, or always being miners and blacksmiths. Although if that one trait is that the whole race has is that they always wear fake bunny ears into battle, and that losing your bunny ears is a sign of great shame and thus requires a long period of attonment, I'd be willing to accept that.

I think the Succubus was redeemed by the power of love.

Didn't take money. Didn't take fame. Didn't need a credit card...

[Doug Lampert]

I may be wrong in my understanding, but whilst positive energy is more commonly used for good, and negative energy is more commonly used for evil, they canonically aren't actually purely good or evil energies.

IMAO this is correct. Many spells that use negative energy don't have the Evil descriptor, evil clerics prepare positive energy Cure spells all the time with no trouble from their gods and good clerics are able to use inflict spells, the respective planes have no alignment association at all, the energies don't ping detect spells (except possibly for undead and that could have other explanations easily enough).

And I believe the DMG explanation of the planes and their nature outright says that there's no alignment association to the energies although I don't have the books handy and don't plan to check.

All of the above is consistent with the energy being unaligned and inconsistent with it being aligned. But there are two inconsistencies in core: (a) the statement in one of the PHBs (could be 3.0, 3.5, or both) that channeling negative energy is an inherently evil act and that channeling positive energy is an inherently good act; and (b) the NE alignment of mindless undead in 3.5.

I think the two inconsistencies are mistakes by people not paying attention to the (made up) cosmology. But I suppose someone COULD try to make an argument that the complete failure of many spells using the energies to have the alignment types, the failure of many positive and negative energy creatures to have the subtype (or even the alignment), the failure of detect spells to have a line for energy types, and the failure of the planes to have any association are all mistakes and that the two minor exceptions are actually the correct rule.

[Ravens_cry]

Considering that a strongly positive plane will kill you just as dead as a strongly negative Plane, just differently, I wouldn't put either under 'good' and 'evil'. It is more question of life, and death, or rather life and anti-life, AKA undead.
As for racial alignments, I dislike them, deeply. Sure, the orcs you meet that sacked the village aren't going to be good, they DID do an extremely evil act, but that hardly means that the RACE is evil. Killing the ones who did it may very well be justified. But slaughtering others, just because they are orcs and that means they are evil? That is going beyond retribution,and into a revenge. A dark path that be. Or worse, into zealotry.

[monty]

Guns are man-made objects, not manifestation of superior powers in form of unleashed mystic energies that can strengthen or harm living beings or creatures animated by one of these energies.
Guns are nothing more than tools, like picking up a hammer to build a house or break a window.

So, yeah, "association" still applies here.

Irrelevant. When positive or negative energy enters the material plane, it's being used as a tool to do something. A tool is a tool. How it's used has nothing to do with its inherent nature. You can still use negative energy to stop the villain from destroying the world, and you can still use positive energy to heal the villain so they can continue their rampage. Just because people tend to use it for something does not mean it itself is that thing.

Beings made of positive energy, rather than using it, are a different story, but as we've discussed, Lumi are Usually Lawful Neutral, not Good.

[hamishspence]

BoED is about the only book that explicitly says its not ok to kill "orcs, golins, and even the thoroughly evil drow" merely for usually being of evil alignment.

"Violence must have just cause. Attacking a village of evil orcs is not a good act, if the orcs have been doing no harm"

I'm not sure about early editions, but since 3rd ed Drow have been "usually NE" not "Always evil (any)"

These days Drizzt is just one among many Neutral to Good drow, not all of whom serve Eilistraee either.

[Ravens_cry]

Beings made of positive energy, rather than using it, are a different story, but as we've discussed, Lumi are Usually Lawful Neutral, not Good.
Let's use a semi-real world example. Let us say in the googolplexes of space, we meet beings made of Antimatter. Their very touch would destroy us, and if they landed on earth, it would probably render it lifeless, at least. And yet, these beings may or may not be evil. It is just that their very being is hostile to matter. Evil, is a choice. If one of the anti beings sacrificed themselves in what would be considered a suicide bombing, then yes, that was evil, and they made that choice.That doesn't mean the creatures as a whole are any more or less intrinsically evil then humanity.
I feel the same way about positive and negative energy.

[monty]

Let's use a semi-real world example. Let us say in the googolplexes of space, we meet beings made of Antimatter. Their very touch would destroy us, and if they landed on earth, it would probably render it lifeless, at least. And yet, these beings may or may not be evil. It is just that their very being is hostile to matter. Evil, is a choice. If one of the anti beings sacrificed themselves in what would be considered a suicide bombing, then yes, that was evil, and they made that choice.That doesn't mean the creatures as a whole are any more or less intrinsically evil then humanity.
I feel the same way about positive and negative energy.

Why do people insist on saying what I'm trying to say, but better?:smallfrown: