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2020-10-31, 10:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
Right, but the "mis-aligned weapon" level drain doesn't work like any other energy drain effect. It never results in permanent level loss and it disappears as soon as the weapon is dropped. Also, it doesn't give temporary hit points to the weapon, obviously.
"You dropping it after you die" doesn't change the fact that what killed you, was A Negative Level. You can houserule otherwise, but it is a houserule.
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2020-10-31, 10:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
Enervation never results in permanent level loss too.
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2020-10-31, 10:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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2020-10-31, 10:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
There are many ways of inflicting negative levels. But the consequences of being "slain by negative levels" are always the same, except when explicitly stated otherwise.
That's why a character with an intelligent weapon or an aligned weapon, should be extremely careful with it - and if the weapon kills somebody who handles it, the victim should always be dealt with in whatever way will prevent them rising as a wight.
Either get them raised/resurrected, or, if they're an enemy, destroy the body.
For another example - take a Life Drinker. Negative levels inflicted by it on its wielder go away in 1 hour instead of up to 15 hours. Still dangerous.
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItem...tm#lifeDrinker
Life-Drinker
This +1 greataxe is favored by undead and constructs, who do not suffer its drawback. A life-drinker bestows two negative levels on its target whenever it deals damage, just as if its target had been struck by an undead creature. One day after being struck, subjects must make a DC 16 Fortitude save for each negative level or lose a character level.
Each time a life-drinker deals damage to a foe, it also bestows one negative level on the wielder. Any negative level gained by the wielder in this fashion lasts for 1 hour.Last edited by hamishspence; 2020-10-31 at 10:39 AM.
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2020-10-31, 11:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
The reason people are stuck on the good/evil axis is because it's the one with a clear enough definition to actually argue about; arguments about the law/chaos axis tend to break against the fact that few people can agree on what it actually means. It's telling that D&D 5E and Pathfinder 2E, the latest two instalments of the franchise, interpret it completely differently. As someone once put it, it's a solution 40 years in search of a problem.
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2020-10-31, 12:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
Are they really all that different? Or is it just that 5e doesn't discuss each axis separately, but only describes each alignment on its own rather than each part?
From the relevant SRDs:
Originally Posted by Pathfinder 2e SRDOriginally Posted by 5e SRDLast edited by hamishspence; 2020-10-31 at 12:18 PM.
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2020-10-31, 12:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
I don't really mind how 5e has done it, but i find it strange to assume that in the infinite scope of what magic can do in a fantasy setting, being able to scan and tell if someone is lowercase "good" or "evil" would somehow be impossible. Even if you removed the traditional alignment system entirely, people and things can still be "good" or "evil" in the colloquial sense of the word, after all.
Last edited by NorthernPhoenix; 2020-10-31 at 12:21 PM.
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2020-10-31, 12:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
Oh hey, look at that, someone nitpicking and demonstrating something I already addressed. Let me quote myself from the post you are replying to:
I will also paraphrase 1st edition AD&D rules, since they codified nine-grid alignment: "within these guidelines, every GM has to decide what, exactly, Good and Evil stand for in their game". I can fetch you the exact quote later when I have my ink & paper books at hand.
Using (my particular brand of) Utilitarianism as in-game Good is not an error. It is how the system is meant to function. {scrubbed}
Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley
If you tried to map levels of moral development on alignment grid, you'd run out of levels before running out of alignments.
Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley
Also, the game has made a point about players exploiting he system and had rules to penalize it from its inception. The game literally empowers a GM to play the part of god(s), with the option to enact in-game divine punishment for hypocrisy.
Lastly... it's a game. Players attempting to optimize their moral decisions in a game is not more noteworthy than them trying to optimize other types of decisions. Since the game is concerned with modeling afterlife (etc.), characters in the game setting would conceivably do this themselves, were they real people. "What should I do to avoid the big fire below?" is a valid in-character question and mechanized alignment answers that question in a way that a player can also comprehend.
So if you want to convince me this is "extremely awful" , you have to do better than say it "sounds" like it.Last edited by Peelee; 2020-10-31 at 04:05 PM.
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2020-10-31, 12:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
One 5e monster can - the Sprite (nixies, pixies, and grigs). Its power is more limited than the old 3e Detect Evil spell was though.
Heart Sight. The sprite touches a creature and magically knows the creature’s current emotional state. If the target fails a DC 10 Charisma saving throw, the sprite also knows the creature’s alignment. Celestials, fiends, and undead automatically fail the saving throw.Last edited by hamishspence; 2020-10-31 at 12:36 PM.
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2020-10-31, 12:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-10-31, 12:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2014
Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
Yes that is a thing. But what i think is more important to remember (on this topic and others) is that this creature and its ability are just an example of the infinite variety of such things that can exist in a world. The perspective that nothing exists until it's in a book and that once a new book is published things go from not existing to existing is one i find fundamentally flawed and unhelpful. Published books just grant access or perspective over something that always was there.
While that's certainly true, i don't think it's the whole story.
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2020-10-31, 12:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2014
Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
I don't think it's the whole story either, but it may be one important facet of the discussion.
I also find it fascinating that many of the anti-alignment arguments object to an extremely simple "X is always evil" kind of morality that is nowhere implied in the rules. As the Planescape setting shows, the opposite can be the case; cosmic morality is sufficiently complex and nuanced that even angels don't come to the right conclusion 100% of the time.
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2020-10-31, 12:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
I think the point behind changing the way the Detect Evil paladin power works though,
is that the designers thought that the "3.5 version" was not conducive to the gameplay style they wanted.
Maybe not in the core books - but BoVD does have a few "X is always evil" statements.
Even in the 3.5 PHB, there was "Channelling positive energy is a good act and channelling negative energy is evil" for clerics.Last edited by hamishspence; 2020-10-31 at 01:01 PM.
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2020-10-31, 01:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
But there's the rub. The colloquial sense isn't consistent. The colloquial good is like the colloquial "tall" or "old" or "dumb". What does it mean to "Detect Tall"? Does a guy who's 6 feet tall detect as Tall? Does it matter if he's a gnome or a giant? Does it matter what height you are? Does it matter how old he is? Similarly, you could detect things like "has killed someone" or "practices necromancy", but different groups are going to have different answers to the basic question of how moral doing those things is. So you can't have a "Detect Evil" spell and have that mean anything.
Yes, it is. It's an error because it makes the game more complicated for no reason. If you mean Utilitarianism, say that. Then we can all know what everyone is talking about. Insisting that we call your opinion "Good" and other opinions "Evil" is childish petulance, particularly when your justification is "it's that way because I'm the DM".
First of all, (A)D&D, which codified this, always had those other things to use alongside Alignment.
Also, the game has made a point about players exploiting he system and had rules to penalize it from its inception. The game literally empowers a GM to play the part of god(s), with the option to enact in-game divine punishment for hypocrisy.
That's not how morality works. You can't have good and evil "defined differently", because those terms are subjective. However you define Good is how you define Good. It doesn't matter if someone else defines Good differently, even if that person has the power to punish you for doing things they don't like (unless you'd like to take the stance that "Good" means different things in different countries). You can have a metaphysical force and call it Evil, but that just makes things confusing. If you declare, for example, that Utilitarianism is "Good", you haven't magically made Virtue Ethics wrong. Virtue Ethics doesn't claim to be correct because of the way the universe functions to begin with. You've fixed exactly zero moral debates, but you've made all moral debates more confusing.
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2020-10-31, 02:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-10-31, 02:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
Unless they're not. If they're not subjective, then it's possible to be 100% convinced that you're right and be mistaken, just like you can be 100% convinced you know the law of gravity and be mistaken. Not just possible in fact, but given characters who aren't omniscient, it's certain to occur some of the time.
A great example of this is Zariel. She didn't fall because she wanted to do wrong. She was zealous to do good but too arrogant to consider that she might be mistaken about what the good really was.
Less dramatically, the Ceremony/Atonement spell (in Xanathar's Guide to Everything) exists for characters who recognize their error and wish to correct it.
The goal of D&D is not to resolve moral debates, but to roleplay a fantasy character. Cosmic good vs. evil is a theme in many fantasy stories, so why shouldn't it also be possible in a fantasy game?
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2020-10-31, 02:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
I have a LOT of Homebrew!
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2020-10-31, 02:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-10-31, 02:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
They are. Those things are, fundamentally, subjective. That is the inherent nature of moral claims. When someone says "you should kill one guy in the Trolley Problem" or "you should kill five guys in the Trolley Problem", they are not making a factual claim. You cannot change the facts so that one of those answers is wrong. You can change the facts so that they have different consequences, but they already have different consequences, and people already give different answers.
The goal of D&D is not to resolve moral debates
Yes, such obscure titles as two of the three RPGs that have ever held the title for "best selling RPG". We're not debating some obscure mechanic from Fading Suns or something, alignment is part of the game that is synonymous with TTRPGs for most of the world.
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2020-10-31, 03:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
As any good Utilitarian will tell you, there's no error in saying "Utilitarianism = Good". But more importantly, statements like this communicate big and important ideas about settings. Accompanied by the mythological and mechanical layers, they frame and reframe how things work. A setting where "Utilitarianism = Good" is radically different from, say, "Utilitarianism = Evil" - it makes the entire game of "dodge the big fire below" (etc.) different.
That you can only see GM's authorial statements of setting morality as "childish petulance" is your own failing. If this is the level you feel is the cutting edge of the argument, you're just being a case in my earlier point: a player who can't cope with the idea that "Game Good is not real life good".
Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley
I know the answer to the last one: "No". Prior to D&D, games weren't really concerned with describing moral characteristics of game characters at all, as far as I know. Certainly, D&D popularized it and AD&D codified it in a way that directly inspired multiple other systems. Alignment directly inspired concepts and settings such as the Great Wheel and Planescape. Due to its foundational nature, not having Alignment makes those things less functional than they'd otherwise be.
If you cannot find a point for Alignment in all of that, there's no point in me trying to try to convince you any further.
Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley
Nevermind that the actual mechanic is the GM playing part of in-game entities. Such a radical concept in a roleplaying game!
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That was not an option when I bought my copy of the rules.
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2020-10-31, 03:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-10-31, 05:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
The cutting edge of the argument is that, fundamentally, you agree with me. You don't have a "Good" alignment in your games. You have a "Utilitarian" alignment in your games. Calling it "Good" is one of two things: obscurantism, or a childish demand that the rest of the group stroke your ego. If we could just call a spade a spade, we'd be able to have clearer discussions, better transparency between groups, and more useful terminology. And since the concepts at hand would be exactly the same, we wouldn't lose anything. All you're doing is digging in your heels for no reason.
Prior to D&D, games weren't really concerned with describing moral characteristics of game characters at all, as far as I know.
Alignment directly inspired concepts and settings such as the Great Wheel and Planescape.
You must absolutely hate all manners of sports with referees.
Why do such things need to be defined? It's not like a wall, where you need a DC to climb it. In the real world, we don't know what the right answer to the Trolley Problem is. But we manage to make moral decisions none the less. The players can save the princess because they think that is the right thing to do, without having to have the DM reassure them that it is the Good thing to do as well. For all the ranting and raving by the people demanding that the game take stances on deep moral questions, that's not actually necessary at all. There's no story you can only tell if it is objectively and absolutely Good to save the princess, even if that was a thing that made sense.Last edited by NigelWalmsley; 2020-10-31 at 05:15 PM.
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2020-10-31, 05:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
Unless you're wrong and those things aren't fundamentally subjective. Are you unable to accept the possibility that morality might not work the way you think it does, even if only in a fantasy game?
That level of popularity is good evidence that for an awful lot of people the alignment system is a positive, or at the least not enough of a negative to spoil their enjoyment of the game. So why change what clearly isn't a problem when there are plenty of other games you can play if D&D isn't to your taste.
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2020-10-31, 06:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
Indeed, I would say that playing in a world which absolutely has objective good and evil written into its rules is part of the draw for many people. You really can play someone who is objectively good (or evil) - it says so right on your character sheet, and the world will react to your alignment.
I for one have never met someone able to consistently maintain that good and evil are entirely subjective. Thorough discussion will always reveal something that they feel is just plain wrong or unfair, as if they really do believe there is an objective framework within which to judge such things.
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2020-10-31, 06:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
Thing is, I want objective morality, but detect evil and smite evil are incredibly flawed executions of that idea. Again, I don't want objective morality in the form of literal eviltron readings. there is objective morality and then there is just being cartoonish. right and wrong do not have aesthetics/cosmetics, nor are they are matter of opinion. Its the former belief that makes me dislike detect evil, as it implies that evil has a specific aesthetic that makes it identifiable and thus anyone that emulates that aesthetic can be mistaken for evil- as well as aesthetics that if one use can be mistaken for good. I don't want this, not for mortals. for outsiders like celestials and fiends, them having specific aesthetics makes sense, but for mortal people on the prime material plane I do not want to kill something just because "looks evil", not even with the nuances involved.
Why? Well hm.....lets say I found someone found some hidden villain who really deserves killing, like really truly deserves it, and say to do so I got a lot of evidence to support my case for killing him so that everyone will allow me to. I do everything right....so then why is Detect Evil needed? If there is no enough evidence to convince people someone needs to die because he is evil, then there is enough evidence for anyone to make that case and hunt that person down to do it. whether a paladin is there is superfluous, because a rogue with skills in finding the clues could just as easily find evidence of something fishy and figure it out from non-detect evil means and bring the person to justice. There are other ways of finding the villain that are more organic and fun than detect evil, because, how would know to use detect evil on some hidden villain in the first place? what are you, just randomly turning it on just because? while if you have suspicions of someone already, wouldn't your energy be better suited to finding a piece of evidence that you can prove to someone else that wrongdoing was done rather than something only you can see? It makes no sense. and if the ability is so useless as to not even be sure that you can pursue further evidence even if they are evil, its hard to see why you'd even turn it on, as your still someone randomly activating it or activating it on unconfirmed suspicion.
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2020-10-31, 08:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
What weird twisting of terms here. Utilitarianism is a moral theory - it's concerned with defining what is good and what is not. You can't do a text-editor search-and-replace between "Good" and "Utilitarian" because it fails to explain roles of "Neutral" and "Evil" in the system.
You also forgot the entire point of the actual AD&D rules that I paraphrased and another person quoted verbatim: a GM decides exact meaning of Good and Evil for their setting. I may define them in Utilitarian terms, but another GM may not, and is allowed not to, by the rules. Sure, when and where two GMs want to compare notes and know the relevant philosophical terms, they can use those to quickly communicate ideas. But for non-philosopher, you need to follow "I'm using Utilitarian alignment" with "Utilitarianism considers good to be this and evil to be that" (etc.). Thus, to most players, saying "Good is X and Evil is Y" is calling spade a spade. And again, it communicates focus of the setting. A game system does not need to define, include or appeal to every moral theory that exists in real life.
Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley
Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley
Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley
Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley
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2020-11-01, 02:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
According to an interview I watched a few years back, the 5e team wanted to minimize what alignment does, period. They can't remove it from the game, but they can make it have no functions or effect on the gameplay in any real way. Which is what they did.
Which was the right call.
I've been busy for a couple days but I'm still with OP here:
Alignment is pointless, and running 5e as if alignment isn't there is easy, simple, and flat-out better.
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2020-11-01, 04:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
See, that's the part where i disagree. You can take out the old alignment system in terms of player vs DM gatcha mechanics entirely, but i don't belive any character, protagonist or antagonist, can or should be encouraged to be described as if they are post-modern abstractions beyond morality.
Last edited by NorthernPhoenix; 2020-11-01 at 04:23 PM.
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2020-11-01, 04:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: No more Detect Good. Detect Holy instead.
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2020-11-01, 06:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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