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Just out of curiosity, How do you like your Positive and negative energy planes?
Do you align them ie good for positive, or evil for negative?
Or to you prefer to keep the energy planes as they have traditionally been, which is without alignment?
I know this is a truly esoteric question.
What are your thoughts?
Thanks
I personally prefer to keep them unaligned; after all, they are among the basic 'building blocks' of reality, and as such, they should not be inherently good or evil IMHO.
Of course, they are both extremely dangerous: an unprotected creature brought in the Negative Energy Plane would be drained to a husk in mere minutes, and if brought in the Positive Energy Plane would be so much 'pumped up' with life to literally blow out. But this is not so much different than the very same creature brought unprotected in the Elemental Plane of Fire...
Again, I tend to see them as 'elemental forces'; even Fire can be 'gentle' if used to warm and not to destroy. Negative Energy is entropy and destruction, but in this vision is a necessity to keep the Multiverse safe from an unending overflow of life - which would lead eventually to its collapse.
Just my 2c.
I am inclined to think the game works more consitently if you made them good and evil, on the other side, I do not see them as a necesary addition at all.
I don’t think of them as good or evil. They are primal forces. People tend to associate Positive Energy with life, and Negative Energy with death, but neither life or death are inherently good or evil.
If you want a game mechanic argument. The Heal/Cure and Harm spells do not have an alignment to them. Good clerics can cast harm spells just like any other spell, and evil clerics can heal.
If you want a game mechanic argument. The Heal/Cure and Harm spells do not have an alignment to them. Good clerics can cast harm spells just like any other spell, and evil clerics can heal.
I prefer this interpretation because healing is the Clerics' job regardless of alignment.
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I prefer this interpretation because healing is the Clerics' job regardless of alignment.If you want a game mechanic argument. The Heal/Cure and Harm spells do not have an alignment to them. Good clerics can cast harm spells just like any other spell, and evil clerics can heal.
Not really. A cleric's job is to spread his faith. A good way to do this is to provide healing. But that's far from the full extend of his "job".
100% Neutral, and I'd rather see the stuff like Channel Energy and undead reflect this basic fact; rather than trying to impose some sort of pseudo-morality onto stuff in a nonsensical manner.
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Neutral, as useful to men, yet as dangerous and unforgiving, as fire, or the sea.
I'm intrigued by the idea of a 'source of all good / pit of all evil' variation, but never felt like doing all the work necessary to make it viable (making cure spells [Good] and inflict spells [Evil], coming up with alternative methods for evil clerics to heal, etc.).
Plus, using the D&D alignment system, a plane of pure [Good] or [Evil] doesn't make that much sense as the source of life or death. There's nothing inherently 'good' about self-repair or the creation of life, as the most common types of life, that create themselves by the thousands (bugs, vermin) are reviled and associated with evil, disease and necromancy, and trolls aren't held up as chosen saints of goodness for their amazing self-healing abilities.
A plane of pure entropic [Chaos], where everything breaks down and is destroyed by order-annhilating forces, would be a better death and universal oblivion-aspected place, and a plane of pure [Law], where anything that is damaged self-repairs / heals into a better-functioning perfect order, seems like a better place to be associated with healing energies.
At least, to my whacky way of looking at it. :)
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100% Neutral, and I'd rather see the stuff like Channel Energy and undead reflect this basic fact; rather than trying to impose some sort of pseudo-morality onto stuff in a nonsensical manner.
I realize that it was done to avoid making Channel Energy too powerful, but it just makes absolutely no sense that burst of positive energy can't both heal the living AND harm the undead with the same burst, and vice-versa with a negative energy burst.
Without alignment, although I still like evil undead. I mean, necrophilia doesn't involve negative energy, but it's still frowned upon. At least that's what the police told me.
I want them gone. Both. I don't like the concept of positive and negative energy at all. I would prefer adding the radiant and necrotic damage types mechanically and getting rid of positive/negative energy cosmologically.
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If you want a game mechanic argument. The Heal/Cure and Harm spells do not have an alignment to them. Good clerics can cast harm spells just like any other spell, and evil clerics can heal.
If you want a game mechanic argument. The Heal/Cure and Harm spells do not have an alignment to them. Good clerics can spontaneously cast ONLY cure spells , and evil clerics can ONLY spontaneously cast inflict.
same goes for channel.
however I leave the planes unaligned for all the good reasons above.