Venture-Agent, Florida–Altamonte Springs
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<.< >.> At work atm so I don't have my book handy. It is either in the spell section (chapter before spells actually) or in the alignment section. I can post the actual page number in a few hours.
All I can do is quote James Jacobs (which I favorite so I can point to players in my home game.)
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2m7tr?Does-Infernal-healing-make-me-evil#33
Paizo Employee James Jacobs Creative Director May 6, 2011, 01:43 PM | Flag | List | FAQ | Reply
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James Jacobs
As with all spells that have the [evil] descriptor, casting infernal healing is indeed an evil act. How many [evil] spells it takes for you to cast before your alignment shifts toward evil is entirely left up to your GM. Could be immediate, could be after you cast the spell 100 times, could be never. Could be that as long as you cast the spell for good purposes and do enough good acts to balance out your karma that it'll NEVER have an effect.
The [evil] descriptor is mostly in the game so we can have other effects that bolster or diminish spells that are [evil], and to limit certain off-theme spells from spellcasters with alignment requirements. So if you're a good-aligned cleric... no casting of infernal healing for you!
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How many [evil] spells it takes for you to cast before your alignment shifts toward evil is entirely left up to your GM. Could be immediate, could be after you cast the spell 100 times, could be never. Could be that as long as you cast the spell for good purposes and do enough good acts to balance out your karma that it'll NEVER have an effect.
Casting an evil spell is not an alignment infraction in and of itself, as long as it doesn't violate any codes, tenents of faith, or other such issues. Committing an evil act outside of casting the spell, such as using an evil spell to torture an innocent NPC for information or the like is an alignment infraction. For example: using infernal healing to heal party members is not an evil act.
Tamec, James' quote answers your question. Mike Brock (and his predecessors), acting as the GM of Pathfinder Society Organized Play, have determined that casting spells with the [Evil] descriptor will never shift your alignment on their own. There is no conflict between James Jacobs' statement and the PFS policy on the matter.
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Well, we still don't have a source, Michael, at least, not from a rulebook. Tamec was kind enough to quote James Jacobs' forum post, but I'm still looking for anything in the Core Rulebook that argues that simply casting spells like protection from good is an evil act.
For what it's worth, I play Cadavrul, a cleric of the ferryman, Charon. He has cast animate dead on a few ocaissions, but only on fallen beasts and unintelligent monsters. (But he also consorts with a cacodaemon familiar, whom he has given leave to eat the souls of the wicked. "Far better that," Cadavrul says in his thick Varisian accent, "than the damned spending eternity suffering, don't you think?")
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Again I feel the need to reiterate the rule I am looking at and basing my thinking off of. Please show me another rule that may change my mind, but right now seeing this rule I can't see how animate dead is an evil action. I admit it is an evil spell based on the evil descriptor, but I don't see how it is an evil action. This, of coarse, is me making a difference between spells and actions. Spells being the magic you are casting and an action being targetting the spell at something with a desired effect.Good Versus Evil
Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit.
Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.
Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.
People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent, but may lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others.
+1
Also, regarding the claim that "casting spells with the [Evil] descriptor is an evil act because Pathfinder is an objective-morality universe" - to the extent that this claim has been supported with evidence at all, it's been, from the looks of it, a couple of comments from a developer. How, then, is that "objective?" It's the subjective opinion of a couple (clearly, not even all) developers. That's not "objective morality," that's an edict of "authority" - so, similar so something I mentioned earlier, it sounds like you could persuasively say casting spells with alignment descriptors disparate from your own is a Chaotic act, there's still no justification for it to be an Evil act.
A specific campaign setting, or even just a certain style of magic could make a tangible, objective reason for undead-creation magic to be Evil - think of 3.5's Magic of Incarnum, where there's a phenomenon called necrocarnum, which explicitly operates by torturing trapped and helpless souls; in this case, even if you don't necessarily use the power it provides for evil ends (some necrocarnum soulmelds are strictly defensive), it's evil to begin with because of the evil act you've already had to commit in order to obtain the power in the first place (and making the case for "redemption" is difficult, since you're continuing to perform the evil act so long as you have any necrocarnum soulmelds shaped). Magic of Incarnum explicitly says why necrocarnum is evil - there are other soulmelds with the [Evil] descriptor that aren't necrocarnum, but A) though it doesn't go into this much detail, one can deduce from the nature of incarnum (the energy of all souls that are, were, or could yet be) and the fact that 2 of the 3 meldshaping classes the book presents depend on strict alignment requirements that shape their powers even in ways outside their meldshaping, that the reason soulmelds with specific alignments can only be used by meldshapers who share that alignment is because the sorts of souls that can be shaped into those soulmelds won't gravitate to meldshapers of incompatible alignments in the first place, and B) even if a non-Evil meldshaper could somehow manage to shape a soulmeld that had the [Evil] descriptor but wasn't necrocarnum (Gloves of the Poisoned Soul, for example, which gives a potentially quite nasty touch attack that causes ability damage), there's no indication that using those would wind up being an Evil act.
Anyways, unlike this, there's no indication in the basic rules that use of the animate dead spell does any inherent wrong in any way.
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I tried explaining that in my first post, and have added dimensions to it in subsequent posts - spell descriptors, by definition, describe the spell, NOT the caster. Infernal healing has the [Evil] descriptor because it employs the properties of an Evil Outsider's physiology, and animate dead has the [Evil] descriptor because it creates creatures that are associated with Evil for, shall we say, "legacy" reasons more than anything else. As I mentioned before, the argument that merely casting spells with alignment descriptors is enough to eventually drive you to that alignment is tantamount to saying that casting spells with the [Fire] descriptor will eventually turn you into a fire elemental or something.
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If a spell isn't evil....why put Evil in its descriptor?
Well it IS, but its not evil enough to worry about due to the episodic nature of PFS.
1) Keeps good clerics (oracles?) from casting it
2) Gives people that want to be dark and edgy something dark and edgy to do.
3) Adds a dark evil flavor without actually having the players do anything morally reprehensible.
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Venture-Agent, Florida–Altamonte Springs
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Pg 212
[Descriptor]
Appearing on the same line as the school and subschool, when applicable, is a descriptor that further [bold]categorizes[/bold] the spell in some way. Some spells have more than one descriptor.
It is categorized as evil. It has been evil for 30+ years, except in organized play (both the rpga and pfs).
Denying someone their dignity is an evil act. Desecrating the dead is denying the deceased their dignity in death.
I say again, in PFS according to the FaQ I will not do anything to someone's alignment due to casting Animate Dead, that is not to say that soldiers (good npcs) who witness the necromancer desecrating the remains of their friends will sit by idly.
Throughout literary history necromancers have been the bad guys from the Norse stories of Hel and her army (ok that's actually religion not literature), to Sauron in Lord of the Rings, to the Lich King of Warcraft, and all necromancers in between. Granted the three I mentioned are big bads who want to turn their respective worlds into tyrannical domains under their control.
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But he also consorts with a cacodaemon familiar, whom he has given leave to eat the souls of the wicked.
Frankly? If you pulled that at any table of any GM I know, your character would be ruled evil and removed from play. If you don't see having a daemon *eat a soul* as evil, then nothing clearly qualifies and this conversation is pointless.
There are some days I'm glad that these tend to stay as forum arguments and don't become real issues.
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[in character, to Alexander] It is a damned soul, already dead and heading off towards its reward. Nothing any of us can do now might redeem it. And what reward is that? What awaits a wicked soul in Hell, or in the Abyss? Why, if the villain was headed for Abaddon, his soul would spend the rest of its existance fleeing from just such hungers, and just such a fate.
Is it such an evil thing, then, to kill a turkey in the first minutes of Thanksgiving?
[out of character] Cadavrul is a dark, edgy dhampyr Cleric of a spooky god, but he has a pretty clear moral boundary to never harm innocents and to support his pure allies however he might.
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It is categorized as evil.
Let's be clear. The passage you found indicates that the spell is categorized as [Evil]. Yes, indeed.
The caster is not categorized as an evil creature. The action of casting it is not categorized as an evil act.
I find the arguments of "I'm Hiding in Your Closet" to be compelling. An oread sorcerer can cast fireball all day. The spell is categorized as [Fire]. The caster isn't, and repeated casting of fireball will never give him a fire subtype. And the action of casting the spell isn't a "fire action", either.
Put simply, you're mixing up a spell type, with any moral ramifications of the action of casting it. That's not true in any other part of the game rules (for example, throwing a holy shiruken isn't a good action.)
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It is categorized as evil. It has been evil for 30+ years, except in organized play (both the rpga and pfs).
I could be mistaken, but I don't recall spells having descriptors (schools and spheres are a totally different animal) prior to 3.0.
Denying someone their dignity is an evil act. Desecrating the dead is denying the deceased their dignity in death.
I'm. SO. TIRED. Of this. I agree with "denying someone their dignity is an evil act," but I'd sooner look askance at those hypothetical soldiers you mentioned and/or the people who brainwashed them in boot camp for that sort of thing. The concept of "desecrating the dead" is a purely subjective cultural quirk, and insisting it's "Evil" is in no way shape or form an objective moral judgement - especially when Fighters never get this kind of crap for devoting their lives to killing people. You can chew up living, sentient beings like popcorn, but corpses? OH NOES, YOU'LL HURT ITS FEELINGS!
Throughout literary history necromancers have been the bad guys from the Norse stories of Hel and her army (ok that's actually religion not literature), to Sauron in Lord of the Rings, to the Lich King of Warcraft, and all necromancers in between. Granted the three I mentioned are big bads who want to turn their respective worlds into tyrannical domains under their control.
1. Things can change - that's part of the fun. In the original Star Trek, "Klingon" meant "Bad Guy" - then Star Trek: The Next Generation said, "guess what? There's a Klingon on the bridge of the Enterprise - his name's Worf, he's 5th-in-command, and he's kind of the show's Falstaff."
2. The reason necromancy and the undead have historically been associated with Evil is simply because they're scary - the events of the 20th Century taught people (malevolent and terrifyingly effective efforts on the part of that century's sore losers to erase it notwithstanding) to reappraise what they'd been accustomed to thinking of as "Good" and "Evil," and realized that Man is the real monster, and Evil comes from, among only a few other places, fear of the unknown.
3. I'm not aware of Hel having an "army" - I've been attending a monthly Asatru group for the past several months (I don't label myself an "adherent" for a variety of reasons, and it doesn't help that it turns out having a special affinity for Loki makes you a heretic even among heathens, but I have several of my own reasons for going), and one of the coolest meetings I've attended so far was about the Nordic afterlife; there are evidently many visions of what that's supposed to be, but with regards to Hel's domain, it turns out that, unlike its portrayal in Snorri Sturlusonn's Eddas that's only slightly less bleak than the portrayal of Eresh in the Epic of Gilgamesh, it's more than anything else like, well, a Tim Burton movie: It's dark down there, and the dead may look more the part, but other than that, it's like mortal life (you can even die twice and go to "Niflhel," and nobody's sure what that's like). Besides, even those who take issue with Loki never said Hel (His daughter) was evil. If you're referring to the Ragnarok prophecy at all, keep in mind that that's mostly, if not entirely, an ex post facto fabrication by Christian missionaries (Sturlusonn wrote his Eddas at the time when traditional Nordic religion was finally succumbing to Christianity, or even a while after that, so it turns out that while it provides what most people today know about traditional Nordic religion, there's quite a bit wrong with it).
4. "All necromancers in between?" I'm going to go out on a limb and say I know for a fact that you haven't come close to being familiar with every necromancer in fiction ever (or even just those presented between the publication of Lord of the Rings and Warcraft III) - after all, you're obviously failing to notice the Necromancer from Diablo II, Erzulie Gogol from Terry Pratchett's Witches Abroad, and the kid from Frankenweenie, to name only a few.
4. Whose "literary history" are you referring to, if I may ask?
Traditional (pre-Buddhist) Tibetan myth, religion, and occultism is kind of choc-a-bloc with necromancy, including, very specifically, the practice of reanimating corpses (what's interesting, based on this account, is that a rolang may rise spontaneously or by sorcery, and it is the sort that rises spontaneously that is known to be evil - the kind raised by deliberate magic, not necessarily, NOR is the magician who performs it).
Then there's the Death's Godson fairy tale, which as the linked article mentions, has many versions with very different endings, but one which it doesn't mention is one I read in a book years ago, where Death's godson manages to get the better of him and manages to save the life of a dying woman he's fallen in love with, even though Death insists "it's her time;" the arrangement is that he tells his godson (as in the other stories, now a renowned doctor) that his patients will live by appearing at the foot of his operating table, and that they will die if he appears at their head - which Death does in the case of this woman he wants to save, so what the doctor does (Death's already made up His mind, but there's still time enough time to do this) is build a trick operating table that he can swivel in a full circle; when the moment of truth is at hand, Death appears again at her head, so the doctor spins the whole table around so Death is now standing at her feet rather than her head. Death teleports back around to her head. The doctor spins the table back the other way. This Ingrid Bergman-meets-Charlie Chaplin routine continues until Death gives up, the woman lives, and yes, Virginia, she and Death's godson Live Happily Ever After - better, longer living through what I'm pretty sure qualifies as some kind of necromancy.
Oh, and don't get me started on one of the most famous and beloved literary heroes of all time....
Oracles are not prevented from casting opposite alignment spells.1) Keeps good clerics (oracles?) from casting it
Great Scott! This site doesn't say they can't, true, but that site, while usually correct about, has been known to make errors of omission, and I'm pretty sure this is one of those occasions, because although it does specify Clerics can't, it doesn't say Inquisitors can't - and I know they can't. I'm pretty sure, as I've mentioned before, that spells with opposing alignment descriptors are explicitly verboten for all divine spellcasters (with the possible exception of Rangers, whose spell list is unlikely to include such spells in the first place, Inquisitors of the Infiltrator Archetype, and Paladins, who may not have had that rule stipulated for them since their spell list is designed to cater to one alignment and one alignment alone to begin with, but the Unsanctioned Knowledge feat may have - unintentionally? - provided a tricky backdoor in that case).
Actually, this brings something else up: BEHOLD! The Infiltrator Inquisitor Archetype, which expressly lifts divine spellcasters' normal prohibition on casting spells of opposed alignment. Think about this: How is this not PROOF that you can cast spells with alignment descriptors without being dragged toward that alignment? This is the double-agent character - you only want the very purest/foulest/most loyal/incorrigible souls for this job. If it were possible to switch sides just by casting spells, regardless of what you cast the spell for, this Archetype wouldn't exist, since it would mean churches sending their enemies gift-wrapped converts.
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Nope, Oracles can cast spells opposing their alignments. They can do so because they don't directly draw their power from worshiping gods.
I don't have overly convenient access to my [i]Advanced Player's Guide[i/] at the moment, but I'm going to need to look this up - I could swear I saw that caveat in their class description as well.
Your explanation makes sense enough - although it would mean that the restriction suddenly WOULD apply in settings like The Forgotten Realms where ALL divine spellcasters are required to have a divine sponsor.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Alabama—Huntsville
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Well, we still don't have a source, Michael, at least, not from a rulebook. Tamec was kind enough to quote James Jacobs' forum post, but I'm still looking for anything in the Core Rulebook that argues that simply casting spells like protection from good is an evil act.
Well it's a ruling from James Jacob that says his intent. I personally think if animate dead actually tortured the dead's soul or whatever it is that makes James feel it is evil. I also don't like that alignment descriptions effect caster and target while all other descriptions don't. I don't think you will find it in RAW, but with a developer's intention we know what they were trying to do with the alignment description. And it might be that they would change their mind on certain casting that might result in effects they didn't expect.
However that being said I still think you can animate dead and cancel it out with your actions related to the dead and honestly if a GM is the type to go against the PFS rules on GMing and just turn my character evil that is a GM I would not like to play with.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Alabama—Huntsville
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But he also consorts with a cacodaemon familiar, whom he has given leave to eat the souls of the wicked.Frankly? If you pulled that at any table of any GM I know, your character would be ruled evil and removed from play. If you don't see having a daemon *eat a soul* as evil, then nothing clearly qualifies and this conversation is pointless.
There are some days I'm glad that these tend to stay as forum arguments and don't become real issues.
Alexander where in the spell does it say what happens to the soul when you cast the spell?
Animate Dead
School necromancy [evil]; Level cleric 3, sorcerer/wizard 4
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, M (an onyx gem worth at least 25 gp per Hit Die of the undead)
Range touch
Targets one or more corpses touched
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no
This spell turns corpses into undead skeletons or zombies that obey your spoken commands.
The undead can be made to follow you, or they can be made to remain in an area and attack any creature (or just a specific kind of creature) entering the place. They remain animated until they are destroyed. A destroyed skeleton or zombie can't be animated again.
Regardless of the type of undead you create with this spell, you can't create more HD of undead than twice your caster level with a single casting of animate dead. The desecrate spell doubles this limit.
The undead you create remain under your control indefinitely. No matter how many times you use this spell, however, you can control only 4 HD worth of undead creatures per caster level. If you exceed this number, all the newly created creatures fall under your control, and any excess undead from previous castings become uncontrolled. You choose which creatures are released. Undead you control through the Command Undead feat do not count toward this limit.
Skeletons: A skeleton can be created only from a mostly intact corpse or skeleton. The corpse must have bones. If a skeleton is made from a corpse, the flesh falls off the bones.
Zombies: A zombie can be created only from a mostly intact corpse. The corpse must be that of a creature with a physical anatomy.
By putting our own take of a spell we can make any spell seem good or evil. That's why you need to stick with RAW and rulings made my the developers. Speculation on what happens during the spell is worthless to this conversation without some text backing it up.
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Michael, Alexander was refering to another aspect of my cleric of Charon, which I'd brought up parenthetically.
(It took him three feats to get an improved familiar, but he did what he needed to do, to get a cacodaemon bobbing along besides him, tempting him towards the ways of darkness and corruption. The cacodaemon has the ability to ingest the soul of a reecently-dead sentient creature. There's mechanics for this, but essentially it serves as an impediment to bringing a scenario's villain back to life.)
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Another aspect of that character is more on-topic, and I don't see anyone having addressed it yet. If casting animate dead is an evil spell because of what it does to a creatures soul, or because it's irreverent to the deceased's body, what about a character who only animates the corpses of non-sentient monsters? Is that also an evil act? If so, why?
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A) Do you understand that animate dead and lesser animate dead give you inherent, indefinite control over the undead you create with it? It's true that create undead and create greater undead don't do that, though.
B) While there are other conceivable options, the Bones Mystery IS the obvious way to be an Oracular Necromancer - you might want to reappraise the Revelations if you really want to be one, they look good enough to me. True, Armor of Bones as designed is dumb for a character who can wear physical armor just fine thank you very much, but most Oracle Mysteries are burdened with such a Revelation for some reason. Other than that: Bleeding Wounds may seem weak, but every hit point can count, and it's a bonus to the inflict spells an Oracular Necromancer will likely be good friends with anyways; Death's Touch isn't great as an attack (although it could be for low-level Oracles with a low Strength), but it is good for maintaining your minions; Raise the Dead is actually fantastic if you think about it - you can take it at 1st level, and it lets you create a monster as a standard action for potentially WAY longer than some other 1st-level caster's summon monster spell will last, and while that will eventually turn around to your comparative disadvantage, it keeps getting stronger otherwise; Resist Life has its obvious drawbacks, but you'll be perfectly capable of healing yourself with your presumed abundance of negative energy powers, and perhaps most importantly, you'll get to blow raspberries at Evil Clerics and other enemies who channel negative energy, who are normally f*~%ing scary; Soul Siphon is a poor man's enervation, but it's a power Oracles don't normally get (the Cleric/Oracle list offers energy drain as a 9th-level spell, but not it's more accessible little brother, for some odd reason), and even one negative level is nasty - AND it heals you (only for a little, but it's something); Voice of the Grave is a souped-up speak with dead spell that trades duration for ease of accessibility and a slight edge in communicating with the uncooperative the "normal" spell doesn't offer.
C) If you really don't like the Bones Mystery, the obvious alternative is Juju, which includes the Undead Servitude Revelation. I don't know whether or not it's legal for Organized Play, however.
D) The Lore Mystery includes the Arcane Archivist Revelation, which would allow you to cast the command undead spell as a 3rd-level spell once per day; it requires you to keep a bit of a spellbook, and you can't take it until 11th level - but that's one level before you'd gain the create undead spell that starts creating monsters that aren't automatically under your control. It's far from the best solution, but it can work.
E) You may be able to do what you want as a Life Oracle - I've actually seen this done: Be Neutral (with regard to Good and Evil), worship a likewise Neutral deity (if you do worship a deity), and take the Versatile Channeler feat.
F) I see now what you mean about "the Elf route" - having the command undead spell isn't as important if you can already command them via channeling (my impression was sort of that it was a way for arcane necromancers to make up for the fact that they couldn't command the undead in that fashion - specialist Necromancers now can opt for that ability, but most Sorcerers and Wizards still need it), but if you really want it, the Ancient Lorekeeper looks pretty good to me, especially since it means you could learn the wide array of cool Necromancy spells that Oracles don't get.
THE CHOICES ARE YOURS AND YOURS ALONE! GOOD LUCK....
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Okay, I thought of a good example for those in the camp of (evil descriptor=evil act, with no context necessary). allow me to present Thorock:
Thorock is a true neutral cleric of Groetus. as he has no opposed alignments, he can cast all spells with any alignment descriptor equally. for today's discussion, he has chosen to memorize holy smite, which clearly has the good descriptor.
the adventure ensues, and during the course of fighting in an orphanage, Thorock casts holy smite, which effects the evil outsiders that are attempting to kidnap the children, as well as many of the children themselves, as their alignment is neutral, meaning that they take half damage and save for 25%. let's say that thorock is a 10th level cleric, which means that he deals 5d8 to the enemies (for my purposes here, let's assume that he rolls maximum on his 5d8, which would be 40). The children roll and most fail the save (as they can't make the dc). Now Thorock has used a good aligned spell to kill a bunch of children.
by the logic mentioned at the start of my post, Thorock has committed a good act, and his alignment moves towards good. His god, of course, doesn't really care, as all things end.
I'll grant that this is an extreme example, but one that could have a reasonable chance of happening.
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yes, but in my example above, Thorock was attempting to destroy evil outsiders. that definitely falls into the realm of good in my book. It just happened that he managed to kill a bunch of kids as a side effect of his desire to protect them from being kidnapped.
I'll grant that any gm who was worth their salt would point this out to the player and offer them a chance to rescend, but this part is completely tangentical to the answer of the thorny problem I have presented.
and if good requires intent and action, then casting evilly aligned spells are just fine if the intent is good and the action is good as well.
After all, raising undead to allow them to kill their killers has to be a good act. there's an entire paladin oath based around the concept of vengeance.
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The very casting of an evil spell is an evil act. You by definition, cannot have both a good intent and a non evil action while casting an evil spell.
I would respectfully disagree with that statement. let's look at lesser infernal healing. It definitely has the evil descriptor. Let's say that, for argument's sake, you have no one in your group that can cast cure spells, and you have a wizard with a wand of lesser infernal healing.
he comes across the group of children from my example above after thorock has left, and discovers that one of them is bleeding out but not dead. he pulls out his wand, casts the spell, with the intent of healing the boy, thereby saving his life.
let's see if my scenario fits your criteria:
good intent: saving the life of a boy.
non-evil action: activating a wand.
casting an evil spell: check.
where does that put us now? a cleric has done an arguably evil action using a good aligned spell. a wizard has done an arguably good action while using an evil aligned spell. I would posit that if the wizard has committed an evil act, then by the same criteria that you judge him doing an evil act, the cleric has done a good act.
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Vrog, your arguments don't make the point they're trying to make. You're trying to find an internal inconsistency with the statements but you're using the external criteria that the spell ISN"T evil.
non-evil action: activating a wand (of infernal healing)
You're declaring this a non evil action. That's not an argument.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Alabama—Huntsville
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The only way I can see alignment based spells working with modifying your alignment is that the spell alters your alignment for drawing on the (good/evil) power source and then your action with the spell might alter your alignment. But this is really the only way I see alignment spells working the way the developers have ruled.
Thanks for the info on oracles, I didn't know about Voice of the Grave. That will help me out with my build.
BigNorseWolf, give us references when you say you can't have a good intent and a non evil action while casting an evil spell. I can't find that in the rules and if there is no rule saying you can't and there is no FAQ saying you can't then you are just imposing a rule on yourself and the rest of us don't have to impose it on ourselves.
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I'm not arguing that the spell doesn't have the evil descriptor. I'm just saying that there can be situations where casting an evil spell is a good thing.
note that the crux of my argument is that using the exact same logic: "casting a spell with the evil descriptor is an evil act. period. regardless of circumstances."
I'm just pointing out that the opposite has to be true as well then (as by definition good and evil are opposites, and each is often used to help define it's opposite): in which case, in my scenario above, I've performed a good act that has quite a bit of collateral damage, in the form of a bunch of dead children. Orphans, none-the-less.
which means that, god help us all, as an extension of that logic, I can become good aligned by killing children.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Alabama—Huntsville
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I think BigNorseWolf is trying to say that to be good you must have a good intention and good action while evil can be a good intention and evil action or evil intention and good action or even evil intention and evil action.
> The counter is that good and evil don't work in exact opposites. Good requires both good intent AND good actions. Evil is fine with either. Sound hard? Its good. Its supposed to be.
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What is that old phrase about the road to hell?
-j
ardless of circumstances."
I'm just pointing out that the opposite has to be true as well then (as by definition good and evil are opposites, and each is often used to help define it's opposite):
But good is NOT the strict opposite of evil in this case. The road to Hell, after all, is rather famously paved with good intentions. Good intentions alone do not make an act good. Similarly, good actions taken with evil purpose do not make an act good (Les Liasons Dangereux explored this in depth.)
As an analogy, for an act to be criminal -- at least in most common law venues -- it must have both evil purpose (mens rea) and an evil act (actus reus). That is to say, if you commit an otherwise evil act for a good purpose -- smashing a window to free a child trapped within -- that's a defense against criminal charges. Similarly, doing an otherwise praiseworthy act for an evil purpose is nevertheless not criminally prosecutable.
On the other hand, the deities typically operate on a stricter standard (which is why God is so concerned about sins in thought, in word, and in deed, as these are all independent and all sins). In Catholic theology, merely to think a mens rea is an evil action requiring confession, contrition, and satisfaction, as is merely committing a sin "for a good purpose." This is also the standard that Pathfinder implicitly adopts by marking specific acts as "[evil]."
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It does not. Just because they are opposites doesn't mean they work in exactly opposite ways.(which would be impossible, because opposite can vary based on your point of view)
but then again, so can good and evil.
alignment-based effects, however, have specific rules that they follow (which, to be fair, are being ignored by the campaign for the sake of allowing people to play a greater variety of characters).
The thrust of my point is that you can have a evilly aligned action be a morally good action. and you can have an good aligned action be a morally evil one.
In a home game, using my examples above, most gms would probably say that Thorock's actions were possibly evil, even though he used a good-aligned ability to do them, and with (presumably) good intent.
on the other hand, most gms would imo not give a wizard an alignment fraction for using an evil spell to save the life of a boy.
and I think that's where the crux of the argument lies.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Alabama—Huntsville
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I agree that the best intentions do not make a good act and that even good actions with the wrong intention can be evil. But I am far from convinced that this is always true, nor that saving a orphan with infernal healing is ALWAYS evil. But I feel we keep mistaking what the other is saying.
An evil spell does not count as an action in my book. A spell is more the weapon a caster uses to perform an action. If you count a spell as an action I don't see how you can say fireballing orphans is evil. Even if the intention is good, say to kill a demon hiding as one of them, the action is still evil.
I am by no means saying intentions define the alignment of an action nor am I saying the ends defines the means. I think what makes an action good or evil is far more complicated.
Also I don't accept references to other forums that arguing a similar topic with no settlement. Sorry BigNorseWolf, you ignored me before I could tell you that in your PMs to me.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Alabama—Huntsville
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I fail to see how animating a giant centipede or something like that is any kind of alignment infraction, but whatever.
David, the only way I can see it affecting your alignment, and this has no rules backing it up, would be that the evil powers behind the spell effect you as you cast the spell. But in this case I wouldn't see how that type of alignment ding would not be counter acted by stopping evil in some form or fashion.
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1. Things can change - that's part of the fun. In the original Star Trek, "Klingon" meant "Bad Guy" - then Star Trek: The Next Generation said, "guess what? There's a Klingon on the bridge of the Enterprise - his name's Worf, he's 5th-in-command, and he's kind of the show's Falstaff."Actually he serves more as something to be beaten on to establish how strong the Alien of the Week is if he's strength oriented. Worf may be a nice guy and all, but Klingons in general, even those who are nominally allies, are generally Jerkasses In Uniform.
The Worf Effect!