Hello all,
The act of summoning aligned monsters becomes an evil or good spell based on the alignment of the creature according to the CRB. Thus, summoning angels and demons is a good or evil action.
Assuming I am not a good aligned Cleric, what is to stop me from summoning EVERYTHING on the charts? Anything?
I suspect that it is a GM call to a certain point, but I am curious.
R
Nothing. The effects of using [evil] spells is left pretty much entirely to the GM. Your GM might eventually force an alignment change, or perhaps have an angry mob hunt down your demon summoner (or Necromancer, or whatever) and stop what you are doing. But as you said, it is a GM call.
By the rules if you don't have a class feature saying you can't summon spells with alignment X then you can.
Anything else is a houserule.
Thank you Wraith and Mort. I suspected as much.
When was casting inflict wounds an evil act?
I am assuming you are going by the 3.5 rule the channeling negative energy was evil, and the inflict spells mention channeling evil. RAW it might be correct, but RAI the spell needs the evil descriptor to be evil. That was just bad editing though similar to
Ah. Okay.
Looking at the martial artist's pain points ability... and after chatting with Jason... we're in agreement that the word "humanoid" in the Pain Points entry is not a game term. It's merely a way of saying "your knowledge of how intestines and nerves and hearts and lungs and spleens and other elements of anatomy," but unfortunately using a game term that has specific rules connotations.
So... yes. Pain Points works on anything that can be critically hit or can be affected by stunning fist or quivering palm. We'll clear that language up in the next printing, whenever that happens...
Using evil spells in PF is an evil act. How many spells you have to cast before your alignment changes is up to the GM though.
Yeah, I thought it was pretty straight forward about an Evil descriptor being an Evil spell. My only question was if there were any RAW about you not being able to use Evil spells (obviously unless specifically stated under your class).
To be clear by "rules" I mean designer intent is that the casting of such spells are considered to be bad/evil.
The reason why you are casting such a spell should also be taken into account though, which is why it falls to the GM to decide how many evil points you get.
PS:Evil points is something I just made up. :)
If it has the evil descriptor, then casting it is evil.
I'm boggling at the idea that people think otherwise.
If it has the evil descriptor, then casting it is evil.
I'm boggling at the idea that people think otherwise.
I think it because there is nothing in RAW that says _____ is evil, but the intent is pretty clear to me.
If you can't fill that blank with X(evil act) then you can't say it is evil.
That won't fly at most GM's tables, but I have seen the argument made before.
The 3e/3.5e PhB explicitly said that channeling negative energy was an evil act. Nowhere in that book or the DMG did it mention that alignment descriptor spells were acts of an alignment.
As far 'as intended' go, that's your call on your thoughts there. The original three devs for 3e have conflicted on many things, so it's a can of worms.
I don't see any intention for [evil] descriptor to be an evil act. There are nice, logical places for it to say that and don't.
Just to be clear by rules I mean RAI. By your current argument chopping the heads off of babies and selling them is not an evil act. There was never ever a disagreement about what is or is not evil. Some things not written in the game as RAW are still rules. The dead condition which is badly written comes to mind.
The empower thing is just a bad example. They never said they looked into anything. They made a decision and then reversed it to the way 3.5 was.
Nothing you have listed is folklore. At best you are using "the rules don't say I can't, so I can argument".
I guess we need an FAQ to say that casting an evil spell is an evil act.
Most of these descriptors have no game effect by themselves, but they govern how the spell interacts with other spells, with special abilities, with unusual creatures, with alignment, and so on.
While the above portion is not 100% clear the following states that it is pretty much GM fiat.
Certain character classes in Chapter 3 list repercussions for those who don’t adhere to a specific alignment, and some spells and magic items have different effects on targets depending on alignment, but beyond that it’s generally not necessary to worry too much about whether someone is behaving differently from his stated alignment. In the end, the Game Master is the one who gets to decide if something’s in accordance with its indicated alignment, based on the descriptions given previously and his own opinion and interpretation—the only thing the GM needs to strive for is to be consistent as to what constitutes the difference between alignments like chaotic neutral and chaotic evil. There’s no hard and fast mechanic by which you can measure alignment—unlike hit points or skill ranks or Armor Class, alignment is solely a label the GM controls.
- Gauss
I find it hilarious that casting a spell with an alignment descriptor makes it good or evil, I like to think that casting a spell is not good or evil per se, but rather, what you end up doing with the spell in question (example casting fireball at some orcs to help defend a town, versus casting a fireball at innocent bystanders for the "lulz" which one is good and which one is evil?)