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Positive energy heals the living and injures undead. It does not injure evil outsiders, most of whom are vulnerable to aligned weapons. So I assume that positive energy is not good aligned, even though it is (usually) provided by good aligned gods.
Negative energy heals undead, and injures the living, including evil outsiders. Negative energy could conceivably be evil aligned, as evil gods might not be as discriminating about whom they hurt.
Does this mean evil clerics are more effective vs. demons and devils than good clerics?
How does this positive/negative energy aspect reason out when you consider the new smite mechanics?
Is Positive/Negative energy actually just neutral "healthbar" energy?
I must be missing something.
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Is Positive/Negative energy actually just neutral "healthbar" energy?
Pretty much, yeah.
In 3.X, the Positive Energy Plane is neutral aligned, neither good or evil disposed. The natives of that plane are also neutral aligned. The Negative Energy Plane is *also* neutral aligned, being neither good nor evil disposed, and being only slightly more obviously deadly than the deceptively 'benign' Positive Energy Plane (that makes you feel *good* before it kills you spectacularly!). The natives of the Negative Energy Plane are also neutral-aligned.
Positive Energy heals good, evil, outsider or mortal, damaging only undead. Negative energy heals only undead, whether evilest of flesh-eating abyssal-tainted Ghasts, or good-aligned Forgotten Realmsian 'Archlich,' while damaging all living things, including fiends, fallen Paladin Blackguards who eat succulent babies, negative energy Channeling evil Clerics and bullies who were mean to their grandma.
While the good gods prefer their Clerics to channel positive energy and evil gods prefer their Clerics to channel negative energy, the energies themselves are nonsentient and don't care who they hurt (or heal). Like fire, they burn what they burn and warm what they warm, with no discrimination for who deserves to be warmed and who deserves to be burned.
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Thank you Set. The fire analogy works well for me. It's also depressing.
You'd think positive and negative energy would be more divine in nature. Turning the undead steps further away from its dramatic roots with this clarification. It also creates a lot of weird juju between demons, evil clerics and spells that overlap the concepts of positive/negative energy and good/evil.
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Thank you Set. The fire analogy works well for me. It's also depressing.
You'd think positive and negative energy would be more divine in nature. Turning the undead steps further away from its dramatic roots with this clarification. It also creates a lot of weird juju between demons, evil clerics and spells that overlap the concepts of positive/negative energy and good/evil.
There's no reason that you can't change that up. It would be just as valid a setting choice if the Negative Energy Plane was a place filled with evil critters, and at its lightless core, an ever-hungering evil entity of nihilism more pure than even Urgathoa's longing for undeath or Rovagug's craving for destruction sat brooding. The Positive Energy Plane in this setting would be filled with benevolent entities of glowing life-energy, and this version of the Positive Energy Plane wouldn't so much *kill* material beings, as it would transcend them, burning away their mortal bodies and recasting them as pure entities of immortal energy, which, unfortunately, would also make them into incorporeal outsiders, no longer as able to freely walk their native planes...
Beings able to channel positive energy or negative energy could gain an automatic immunity to the worst effects of those planes (Clerics, Paladins, most Uppper Plane [Good] and Lower Plane [Evil] outsiders, the gods, obviously), so that those beings might also be able to visit the Positive and Negative Energy planes, for short times.
This would allow a plausible connection between the good aligned gods and their Clerics and the Positive Energy Plane, and a similar connection between the evil gods, their Clerics and the Negative Energy Plane. You could then go one step further, and allow good or evil aligned Clerics to take a special feat that allows them to do damage (or extra damage) to outsiders of the opposite alignment type, or to foes who channel the opposite energy type. (So an evil Cleric could channel negative energy to damage a good Cleric or Paladin or Archon, and a good Cleric could channel positive energy to damage an evil Cleric or Blackguard or fiend.)
Under Pathfinder rules, the good Cleric with this feat could channel energy to heal his mortal allies, damage any undead in the area *and*, if he uses this Feat, damage any [Evil] fiends or evil Clerics in the area as well!
The Negative Energy channeling evil Cleric with this feat would be able to damage all living targets in the area, heal all undead *and* do extra damage (doubled?) to all good Clerics, Paladins (over 4th level) or [Good] subtype Archons, Devas, etc.
Currently, the game is somewhat schizophrenic, listing the energy planes and their inhabitants as pure neutral, but mortals who channel those energy types as predominantly good or evil, respectively (and spells that use negative energy as [Evil], but spells that use positive energy as un-aligned, and of a completely different school!).
As DM, you get to take this contradiction and decide how you want it to go in your setting. Either the energy planes, their inhabitants and all uses of their energies are completely neutral *or* the planes are inclined towards good or evil, respectively, and spells, power uses, etc. related to them are similarly good or evil acts.
Whichever one works better for you, go for it.
I prefer alignment to be complex and not easily pinned down mechanically, and so I go for neutral, with intent mattering more than where you are calling the energy from (if you kill someone by infusing them with so much positive energy that they explode, you're still a bad, bad man, and if you use a pulse of negative energy to kill all of the micro-organisms in a plague victim, leaving her light-headed and nauseous, but plague-free, that's not going to send your soul packing to Asmodeus, IMO).
But that's pure preference. Some people like their black dark and their white shiny, with alignment issues very precisely delineated. There's nothing wrong with that, and it can save quite a few arguments over 'morally complex' scenarios if good and evil are checks on a balance sheet and everybody goes into the game knowing that X is *always* evil and Y is *always* good.
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Good suggestions, though I'm not inclined to rework the structure of the planes so channel energy can keep its healing and damage mechanic. The concept seems to be a logical extension of the cure/cause wounds effects on the undead, but upon closer examination it undermines what turning is supposed to represent. The raising of one's holy symbol, the proclamation of devotion or banishment - it's the purest expression that the gods at your back when darkness is about to envelope you.
I don't need to draw a line in the sand between good and evil when it comes to healing and the undead (positive and negative is fine) but I do require that my turning mechanics be a better expression of the divine struggle.
Essentially, I want demons to at least flinch when they see a crucifix. With these rules a succubus has more to fear from an idol of Lamashtu than a symbol of Serenrae. That ain’t right.
I think Cleric design has been so focused on healing that it tends to get tacked onto anything that’s beneficial.
Currently typing up the negative energy plane for PF. Expect moral ambiguity. Expect the same with the positive energy plane as well. :)
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Essentially, I want demons to at least flinch when they see a crucifix. With these rules a succubus has more to fear from an idol of Lamashtu than a symbol of Serenrae. That ain’t right.
I think Cleric design has been so focused on healing that it tends to get tacked onto anything that’s beneficial.
I've always wanted it to be one or the other. I'm quite happy with the idea that negative energy channeling might be evil, but, if that were the case, then positive energy channeling should be equally good, and just as the negative energy spells are [Evil] the positive energy spells should be [Good], which would mean that evil Clerics couldn't use traditional Cure X Wounds spells, but would have to have some special 'evil' variants, that cure less damage, but do so by taking it from another or something (since the negative forces that empower them can't just create life-energy, then can only steal it from someone else).
On the other hand, if all such forces are neutral, then it becomes a matter of intent.
One other odd note that just occured to me now is that fiends often take damage from Holy Water. In theory, a silver holy symbol of a good god is also supposed to be consecrated (although there isn't a spell for that anymore, as I vaguely recall there was back in 1st and 2nd edition), and should have *some* effect on fiends, even if it just burns them if it touches them and doesn't actually 'repel' them.
That might make an interesting optional rule. A Silver Holy Symbol, with a +25 gp cost for the same sort of consecration that goes into Holy Water, might be able to allow the Cleric to damage / Turn evil outsiders as if they were Undead.
Alternately, Silver might only affect Devils, and for Demons, he might need a Cold Iron one... (eh, I don't like that idea, actually, but it's an option to key it off of the critters damage reduction vulnerability)