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Every time a Drift engine is used, a tiny portion of a random plane is torn from its home...
... might tear away a chunk of hell and leave you flying through a cloud of furious devils.
If this happened to a world populated by most mortal creatures, they would die, lost and alone. So using a Drift drive is an inherently selfish and evil act. You are risking the death of other creatures for your gain.
I'm sure the intent wasn't to make it an issue for Starfinder Society, but now that it's occurred to me, I'm going to have to think of a way to explain it away. Any ideas?
maybe have it siphon energy from multiple planes, enough to yknow turn out a lightbulb for a second but spread across the planarverse
While you are risking other creatures I do not believe it tears anything out of the Material Plane, just the Outher Planes.
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The way it has been explained, it does not seem like an evil action.
"A tiny chunk" is likely insignificant. A one inch piece of my house could go missing and I might not notice for a very very long time. This one inch piece is probably much larger than the amount disturbed from a plane by using the Drift.
The chunk of hell example I assume is a rare occurrence. Many of daily drive fast moving slabs of metal and plastic that both produce varying amounts of pollutants (destroying 'a tiny piece' of the entire planet) and risking accidental death. Few consider this an evil action.
The way it has been explained, it does not seem like an evil action.
"A tiny chunk" is likely insignificant. A one inch piece of my house could go missing and I might not notice for a very very long time. This one inch piece is probably much larger than the amount disturbed from a plane by using the Drift.
Dead Suns shows just how wrong this assumption can be :3
The alternative is not being able to move across the galaxy at a reasonable pace, so I'd consider it more of a neutral action.
... I don't think "convenience" translates to Good.
Venture-Captain, Illinois—Fairview Heights
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... I don't think "convenience" translates to Good.
I'm going to play "Devil's" advocate here. What if the drift is the difference between responding to a life-threatening distress call in time or guaranteeing the death because you took too long by not "drifting"?
That doesn't make it good though.
And Drifting is only accurate when you have Drift beacons, is it not?
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Wasn't there an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which the crew learns that every time a starship uses its warp drive, the fabric of the universe is ripped a little more, which would eventually lead to [something like the end of reality]? This seems similar, except that it's someone else's reality that is impacted.
While you are risking other creatures I do not believe it tears anything out of the Material Plane, just the Outher Planes.What about Golarion when the Triune brought its first Drift engine prototype online?
lol, possible.
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Entirely possible that drift use is evil. Entirely possible that using it is literally sacrificing a portion of some random plane, as in sacrificing it to evil forces. Entirely possible that the Drift is a realm that functions as an altar to Asmodeus, who took advantage of the Gap to turn himself into a sophisticated virus lurking in the back of the mind/databanks of Triune. Entirely possible a deity known for scheming and long term plans would use a literal historical blackout to disappear, subtly corrupt a nascent god, and create a method to slowly and inexorably damn an entire universe. Entirely possible that all those torn off chunks of planes are slowly drifting to Hell, and after eons of drift usage, there will only be a damned material plane, and Hell. Entirely possible the stars will burn with hellfire, and Asmodeus will claim eternal dominion over all of creation.
Entirely possible. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to line my suit with tinfoil to keep drift damnation from sticking.
Tongue in cheek conspiracies aside, the drift may actually be "not good" to use. But, much like in our world, it may simply be too useful to not use. Look at fossil fuels, modern farming, and all the other technologies we use that might be "not good", but outside of a small percentage of rebels, are otherwise used enthusiastically, ambivalently, or at least grudgingly by everyone else.
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Tongue in cheek conspiracies aside, the drift may actually be "not good" to use. But, much like in our world, it may simply be too useful to not use. Look at fossil fuels, modern farming, and all the other technologies we use that might be "not good", but outside of a small percentage of rebels, are otherwise used enthusiastically, ambivalently, or at least grudgingly by everyone else.
And that's actually a really great and thematic bit of world building. But unfortunate in an organized play campaign where you have to track evil actions.
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Venture-Agent, Online—VTT
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And that's actually a really great and thematic bit of world building. But unfortunate in an organized play campaign where you have to track evil actions.
Tongue in cheek conspiracies aside, the drift may actually be "not good" to use. But, much like in our world, it may simply be too useful to not use. Look at fossil fuels, modern farming, and all the other technologies we use that might be "not good", but outside of a small percentage of rebels, are otherwise used enthusiastically, ambivalently, or at least grudgingly by everyone else.
In an organized play campaign where evil actions are tracked with growing infamy, it would be hard to justify someone becoming infamous because they used a drift engine to travel in a setting where everyone uses drift engines to travel.
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Dead Suns shows just how wrong this assumption can be :3The way it has been explained, it does not seem like an evil action.
"A tiny chunk" is likely insignificant. A one inch piece of my house could go missing and I might not notice for a very very long time. This one inch piece is probably much larger than the amount disturbed from a plane by using the Drift.
Dead Suns has something about my house in it? /boggle
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"A tiny chunk" is likely insignificant. A one inch piece of my house could go missing and I might not notice for a very very long time.What if the 1" piece ripped away was in the middle of your chest? That might be a bit more noticeable :-)
If my chest was the size of my house, the analogy would make sense.
The alternative is not being able to move across the galaxy at a reasonable pace, so I'd consider it more of a neutral action.... I don't think "convenience" translates to Good.
Taking 100+ years to travel to various worlds in the vast is a little more than "inconvenient."
Taking 100+ years to travel to various worlds in the vast is a little more than "inconvenient."The alternative is not being able to move across the galaxy at a reasonable pace, so I'd consider it more of a neutral action.... I don't think "convenience" translates to Good.
and?
It's only "evil" if "good" society deems it as such. The society of the Pact Worlds certainly doesn't consider Drift travel to be evil.
We're talking about actual Alignment, not what is socially acceptable in the Pact Worlds.
I have not once claimed that Drift Travel was good. I said it was neutral.That doesn't make it good though.
And Drifting is only accurate when you have Drift beacons, is it not?
You were claiming it was "Good" enough to not be Evil just because it was convenient.
and?Taking 100+ years to travel to various worlds in the vast is a little more than "inconvenient."The alternative is not being able to move across the galaxy at a reasonable pace, so I'd consider it more of a neutral action.... I don't think "convenience" translates to Good.
And, if you need to travel to a colony in distress, 100+ years might be a little on the "you are too late" side of the equation. Or if you need to investigate ruins on a planet in the Vast, a 100+ year travel time means that you pretty much need generation ships to do so.
Plus, just having an entire campaign where your character lives in one ship as it travels through space and dies of old age before anything interesting happens just sounds boring, y'know?
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Rysky, that's not how that works.
He's saying it's neutral. It doesn't have to be good in any capacity to not be evil.
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How about this argument?
The populated portion of a plane is so infinitesimally small, with the rest being VERY empty, that the odds of you actually pulling someone or something through makes not spitting on the tundra on the off chance someone slips and dies from the fall seem logical and likely.
If someone gets pulled through odds are that one God or another decided it was their time for a little explosive decompression.
Sorry, I just can't get behind the logic that "it's convenient for me" makes something less evil.
and?Taking 100+ years to travel to various worlds in the vast is a little more than "inconvenient."The alternative is not being able to move across the galaxy at a reasonable pace, so I'd consider it more of a neutral action.... I don't think "convenience" translates to Good.And, if you need to travel to a colony in distress, 100+ years might be a little on the "you are too late" side of the equation. Or if you need to investigate ruins on a planet in the Vast, a 100+ year travel time means that you pretty much need generation ships to do so.
Plus, just having an entire campaign where your character lives in one ship as it travels through space and dies of old age before anything interesting happens just sounds boring, y'know?
The colony in distress example is kinda hollow since without Drift travel it wouldn't exist in the first place. But if you expand that it's also hollow since something somewhere in the universe is always in distress. Using the Drift to save one specific place according to whimsy doesn't make the Drift less f*$+ed up.
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Sorry, I just can't get behind the logic that "it's convenient for me" makes something less evil.
What if you start from the position of it not being evil in the first place?
Of course you can't be convinced it's not evil if you just assume its evil in the first place and are asking to be convinced by examples of how it's good (to reduce its evil quality).
You're problem is you're assuming it's evil in the first place.
It's also worth remember (unless it's changed from Pathfinder) most planes are infinite in size, so what is infinity minus some finite amount? It's still infinite.
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REALITY AM WAY TOO EASY FOR SUNDERING ANYWAYS, DRIFT AM JUST GIVING MASSES POWER BARBARIAN AM USING FOR CENTURIES ALREADY. REALITY AM ONLY CASTER LEVEL 42, SPELL SUNDER AM RENDING FABRIC OF SPACE TIME OPEN SINCE ULTIMATE COMBAT AM THING.
DRIFT TECHNOLOGY AM CLEAR AND VALID ATTEMPT BY POWERS THAT BE TO SOLVE BARBARIAN-NOT BARBARIAN DESTRUCITY BY GIVING EVERYONE POWER PUNCH HOLES IN REALITY.
THUS, USING AM INHERENTLY MAKING SELF MORE LIKE BARBARIAN, WHO AM SMASHING ALIGNMENT, ERGO ALIGNMENT OF USING DRIFT AM BARBARIAN ALIGNMENT OF CHAOTIC , OR SIMPLY TRUE SMASH, WHICH AM BEST ALIGNMENT.
Well it kinda is, and the Core Rulebook and Dead Suns is backing that up.
The developers even said along the lines of "[regarding the drift] it's one of those things that seems okay at first but in the long run is actually a really, really bad day."
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I don't think anything in the CRB backs up your claim, but stuff from Dead Suns might.
That said I don't know anything about what happens in Dead Suns.
Also, in order for it to be evil people would need to know that it actually had dangerous long term implications before it would be considered evil.
It's also worth remember (unless it's changed from Pathfinder) most planes are infinite in size, so what is infinity minus some finite amount? It's still infinite.
Outer Planes are, but demiplanes are not. The Drift affects all planes but the Mateiral (that we know of). And I do mean all.
They may be infinite but tearing them apart and grinding them down and making them all bleed together like all the ships are mini-Maelstroms is kinda bad for the stability of the Universe.
I don't think anything in the CRB backs up your claim, but stuff from Dead Suns might.
That said I don't know anything about what happens in Dead Suns.
Also, in order for it to be evil people would need to know that it actually had dangerous long term implications before it would be considered evil.
The tearing the planes apart and making them all bleed together is in the Core Rulebook, which I pretty sure people using the Drift are well aware of.
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The tearing the planes apart and making them all bleed together is in the Core Rulebook, which I pretty sure people using the Drift are well aware of.
** spoiler omitted **
Hmmmm.....that would make it super dangerous.
The tearing and "bleeding" (whatever that's supposed to mean) part doesn't actually seem all that bad (going back to my infinite planes thing, I don't really care about demiplanes). But if it rips out parts of planes that are incredibly dangerous like your hidden example, I have a better understanding of what you mean now.
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Well we don't really know till the people at paizo respond to this, and put a clear sign in play.I'm sorry, but is an argument really being made that using a ship's Drift engine is an alignment infraction that will earn the ship's crew a point of Infamy?
Only as a thought exercise.
Let's see... you have to enter the Drift at least 3 times during the Into the Unknown quest series. Guess I should have torn up everyone's character sheets as soon as we finished.
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Oh god, using the drift engine is destroying worlds! I drive a car that burns gasoline every day. I also get my power from a coal plant since that's what's available here. I even fly on jet-fuel burning Airplanes. All that is destroying the Earth, yet I'm still doing it because its the only way our society can function.
Are these all evil actions too Risky? Because if so even without the drift engine, those space engines sure must be evil cuz they're burning something.
I don't really see why everyone is comparing tearing apart reality to fossil fuels slowly but surely f%&$ing with the environment.
Also when I put my keys into the ignition I don't have chance of kickstarting the apocalypse.
Space Paladin: I'm giving you one last chance to put down the keys to the Drift drive.
Drift Jockey: I don't care what you say, my galactic wanderlust comes before all.
Space Paladin: I knew you would say that. I'm sorry. <SMIIIIIIIIIIITE!!!!!!!!>
BTW, can anybody explain the de-Evil-ization of Undeath? I mean, OK there's a planet of Undead. The very same planet with very same Undead existed in pre-Gap Pathfinder Golarion. What changed about fundamental nature of Alignment and Undeath?