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Now that the issue of evil spells making the caster evil, or chaotic spells making the caster chaos has been laid to rest in Pathfinder Society, might it be possible to get something official about what happens to the recipient of an evil spell?
QUite a few GMs will put a negative hit on good divine casters because they were the target of an evil spell - sometimes when their characters were not conscious - to the point of requiring an atonement. If CASTING an evil spell is not an issue, what about being the target of one?
TIA
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I have not seen any rules addressing this particular subject. However, I would say it would depend on a lot of different factors, not the least of which being the exact use of the spell. What I do know that being struck by an aligned spell that was applied to you in a offensive manner should not have any impact on your alignment at all. That would be silly. We'd have PFS characters retired all the time from encounters with evil outsiders if that were the case.
As a GM, I will admit that I might be iffy in an instance of willing contact. It is very much uncharacteristic and inappropriate to have a paladin, for example, ASK for infernal healing to be placed upon them. The same goes for a cleric of Torag or Sarenrae, for example. I doubt either of those gods would be very pleased about it. Now, non-divine spellcasting characters it's an easy call to make, especially using infernal healing as our example. Its evil effects do not linger on the recipient. ... 'Course it'd still be awfully fishy for a good aligned character to want that, unless of course it was to save their life. Maybe I'm alone on this one, but I don't think I'd have a non-divine good aligned character suffer any lasting consequences from life saving infernal healing, as most people are not going to want to lie there and die when they can be saved. It's only natural.
Now, as for unwilling or unknowing exposure? That shouldn't do anything. It was not an action on the part of the character, nor was it something (I assume) they would have been willing to receive had they been given the option. If a GM gets you on that, he's being pretty harsh. Makes me want to see something official on it as well, though I can probably guess the answer.
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Now that the issue of evil spells making the caster evil, or chaotic spells making the caster chaos has been laid to rest in Pathfinder Society, might it be possible to get something official about what happens to the recipient of an evil spell?
QUite a few GMs will put a negative hit on good divine casters because they were the target of an evil spell - sometimes when their characters were not conscious - to the point of requiring an atonement. If CASTING an evil spell is not an issue, what about being the target of one?
TIA
Where is this addressed? Haven't seen it yet. I've always treated it like if their doing it a whole lot I might shift their alignment, but I haven't done it in society yet, though I've threatened to a few times (mostly when paladin are talking about slaughtering helpless babies).
Now if its a paladin using infernal healing, I'd probably consider dinging him on that, but I haven't seen that as an issue, actually most paladins I see specifically say "Don't hit me with that or I'll punch your face in."
This is really an area where I feel there can't be a strong ruling one way or another, and GM's should use their judgement. By any means, it seems it should rarely happen after a single scenario, so unless playing with the same GM a lot, it should very rarely be an issue (minus extreme cases).
Off the subject of PFS I was in a game with a girl whose character was good. We come to some guy, probably an undead or something, don't remember the details. I do remember her telling the GM "I can't do anything, the only spells I have memorized today are my evil and necromancy spells"
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There are no rules for this.
If you are not capable of resisting then there should be no penalty. There is no difference between that and a druid dress in metal armor when they are asleep.
I think it is purposely left ambigeous so a DM has the right to make a decsion on this.
Mr. Brock once said his paladin self inflicted the sickened condition on his character for receiving evil healing.
I really like the idea of characters deciding for themselves.
Short answer: Not unless it says so.
Longer answer: Some people may think otherwise. It can be cool flavor, but disagreement on needless punishment based on subjective opinion can lead to unnecessary conflict.
Don't forget to have people roll spellcraft to determine what spell is being cast.
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If a GM wants to apply penalties to my character for being the unwitting target of a spell (other than the stated effects of the spell, of course) he's going to have to show me where he found that in the rules. If being the unwilling target of an aligned spell makes you shift toward that alignment, then there will be a lot of Lawful and Good demons running around by the end of Season 5.
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If a GM wants to apply penalties to my character for being the unwitting target of a spell (other than the stated effects of the spell, of course) he's going to have to show me where he found that in the rules. If being the unwilling target of an aligned spell makes you shift toward that alignment, then there will be a lot of Lawful and Good demons running around by the end of Season 5.
Nah. There's already a lot of lawful good demons walking around. Yog-Sothoth is also lawful good.
I ain't gonna be judged for what some diabler or whatever does, but they still better keep that @#$% away from me.
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As I've said before, the infernal healing spell is kind of the smoking gun that, when you're an arcane magician accountable only to your own conscience, alignment descriptors on spells mean next to nothing (as opposed to divine spellcasters, who may get all kinds of free passes and perks, but only because they're beholden to a higher power who could take it all away at any time).
In fact, infernal healing is an extra-interesting case, as the kinds of damage it can't heal are the kinds that Good-leaning parties are less likely to have to confront in the hands of enemies, meaning the spell is actually more useful for Good characters than Evil.
Just to put a button on the topic, consider this: Harry Potter wound up utilizing 2 out of 3 Unforgivable Curses along his way, and he still came out a rose-scented hero, didn't he?
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Just to put a button on the topic, consider this: Harry Potter wound up utilizing 2 out of 3 Unforgivable Curses along his way, and he still came out a rose-scented hero, didn't he?
The spells to which you refer were "unforgivable" because a legal body deemed them so, not because something about the magic was inherently corruptive (contrast with using the One Ring). So using them was chaotic. One of them was evil to use, as there's no non-evil reason to torture someone, but even in Pathfinder a good-aligned character might resort to an evil act in a moment of desperation or rage.
So over the course of several years, Harry committed several chaotic acts and once or twice he stumbled and committed an evil act, overall maintaining a presumably good alignment (probably CG or maybe NG), in a manner fully supported within Pathfinder's alignment rules.
So, what point were you trying to make?
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It depends on the spell.
Being the target of blasphemy causes problems for good-aligned recipients.
Or .... am I missing the point again?
Does being the target of blasphemy make the targets less good?
Does being the target of a protection from good spell have a negative effect on good characters, especially divine good characters.
Does getting a non-evil buff/heal spell from a summoned evil creature cause a paladin to need an attonement?
Does a paladin or good-god divine caster, who gets an infernal healing spell require an atonement afterwards, and does it matter if they tried to make a will save against the spell or not in the final sistuation?
We know that casting protection from good or infernal healing is a ding against the caster of the spell, but not in a quantified manner in PFS, but what about the recipient.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Has there been any suggestion in any Paizo product that simply being the target of a spell would cause any of that?
I suppose there's a case to be made that willingly accepting the effects of an [evil] spell makes a person complicit in the wickedness of the casting. Like accepting [evil] tattoos and ioun stones are malevolent actions, embracing the drak powers for one's own selfish ends.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Has there been any suggestion in any Paizo product that simply being the target of a spell would cause any of that?
That's kind of the point of the thread; some folks have encountered such claims at the table despite a lack of anything like what you're asking about to support those claims.
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It depends on the spell.
Being the target of blasphemy causes problems for good-aligned recipients.
Or .... am I missing the point again?
Does being the target of blasphemy make the targets less good?
Does being the target of a protection from good spell have a negative effect on good characters, especially divine good characters.
Does getting a non-evil buff/heal spell from a summoned evil creature cause a paladin to need an attonement?
Does a paladin or good-god divine caster, who gets an infernal healing spell require an atonement afterwards, and does it matter if they tried to make a will save against the spell or not in the final sistuation?
We know that casting protection from good or infernal healing is a ding against the caster of the spell, but not in a quantified manner in PFS, but what about the recipient.
Being an unwilling target of an evil spell would certainly have no effect on your alignment whatsoever, that is unless the effect of the spell is to force you to change alignments. Opposing evil doesn't mean you are automatically an ally of the entire good axis(I may be wrong on that but I can't find anything that says otherwise, the Chaotic Good rebel with a golden heart opposing a lawful good empire comes to mind). Are there even any evil creatures in existence that possess buff spells and are also capable of being summoned? I would say that a Paladin since they are so opposed to evil would never be allowed to willingly accept an infernal healing or they would need an atonement. That doesn't mean that a BBEG can discharge infernal healing on a paladin to make him lose his powers. If the paladin didn't willingly accept it, then there has been no infraction. Who says that casting good an evil spells affects your alignment? The only mention I see related to spells and alignment is that clerics and druids are restricted by their alignment in what spells they can cast. Where does it say that casting spells of a certain alignment puts you at risk of changing to that alignment?
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Where does it say that...
There was an entire discussion on that - where the Pathfinder Design team has/was defining use of an evil descriptor spell as being an evil act. Doing evil acts can change one's alignment.
The final decision was to not have an evil act (and good act, chaotic act, lawful act) tracking system, but leave it in the hands of the GMs to determine if the evil acts are enough to change alignment.
My query related to that - on whether we can get a ruling on - since casting evil spells won't likely change alignment could we get that receiving evil spells that one did not cast is not an evil act either.