| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Uh, he actually can't have an imp familiar. Not to mention I see nothing there that would change a CG to CN. Sacrifice of animals is definitely not Evil, unless you presume most...Third, his alignment change came to pass when he learned what had happened to his fellow adventurer's soul, and that it was his familiar who had arranged the deal. He just brushed it off as 'his choice, his problem.' Imo, the fact he seeks out power by taking an imp familiar, and bringing that Evil in the world, the alignment shift could happen.
Uh, it was his fellow adventurer's choice and it is his problem. Apathy is a Neutral reaction not an Evil one. Also associating with an Evil creature or character or even seeking one out isn't really an alignment issue at all, though the motive might make it so. But "seeking power" isn't Evil, so seeking an Evil person "for power" is pretty neutral.
Uh, it was his fellow adventurer's choice and it is his problem. Apathy is a Neutral reaction not an Evil one. Also associating with an Evil creature or character or even seeking one out isn't really an alignment issue at all, though the motive might make it so. But "seeking power" isn't Evil, so seeking an Evil person "for power" is pretty neutral.Uh, he actually can't have an imp familiar. Not to mention I see nothing there that would change a CG to CN. Sacrifice of animals is definitely not Evil, unless you presume most...Third, his alignment change came to pass when he learned what had happened to his fellow adventurer's soul, and that it was his familiar who had arranged the deal. He just brushed it off as 'his choice, his problem.' Imo, the fact he seeks out power by taking an imp familiar, and bringing that Evil in the world, the alignment shift could happen.
Hence him becoming chaotic neutral and not chaotic evil :)
|
"scarring/growth of devilish aspects" applies during infernal healing, I suppose I did not separate or clarify the first part of what I was describing, because someone else posted it first, that you could houserule that flesh healed by IH heals, yet leaves scarring or creates infernal looking flesh rather than normal flesh.
To take it a step further, the healed areas might not just look different, but have some unusual qualities, such as finding contact with holy water painful (just distracting, not damaging) or insensitive to fire (able to burn self for damage over a candle flame without feeling it) or having an allergic reaction to silver (which bypasses some devils DR).
None of that would have a real game effect, but would suggest that the changes are more than just skin deep, and that the person being healed by infernal healing might actually be having their wounded tissue replaced with devil flesh, turning them, bit by bit, into lesser devils of some sort. (Obviously the spell wouldn't actually be able to turn someone into a devil, no matter how many times it was cast on them! That's much higher level magical stuff!) That would certainly be enough to make non-evil recipients (or merely image-conscious ones, who don't like devil-skin scars) refuse infernal healing, or want some sort of 'antidote for the antidote' later to purge the results of the infernal healing from their bodies.
For other evil spells to have actual evil in-game effects, you'd have to come up with stuff. Summoned fiendish animals might cause real animals in the area to pick up fiendish qualities (perhaps 'summoning' a real animal and turning it fiendish for the duration, but sometimes leaving some lingering fiendish qualities in the animal, such as unnatural aggression, or a taste for succulent babies, after the spell ends and the 'summoned' animal is returned to its natural environment). Alternately, creatures from evil planes might bring parasites or contagion with them, that lingers in an area and blights it even after the creature has returned to it's home plane.
Spells like unholy smite, tied to evil, which, for better or worse, is often tied to negative energy, might have detrimental effects on wildlife / nature in the area, causing plants to wither (despite the plants being non-good and even more 'objects' than 'creatures' in game terms) or other thematic effects (milk curdles, food spoils and is full of maggots, a goat gives birth to a two-headed kid, a crow dies standing up on a fencepost and doesn't fall over until someone touches it, etc.).
Such things would be mostly cosmetic, and not reliably reproducible, so that an evil priest wouldn't be able to go casting unholy smite every night near a rivals vineyard to reliably spoil their harvest / ruin their wine, but just sort of leave behind a lingering sense of evil.
Logically, good spells would have the reverse sorts of mostly cosmetic 'good stuff' left behind, like sweeter tasting food, friendly animals doing portentous things (songbirds singing in celestial), a lost heirloom of only sentimental value mysteriously 'showing up,' spontaneous blossoming of plants out of season, etc. Again, not something exploitable. A wizard couldn't summon celestial badgers every day in hopes of it somehow making his herb garden more productive because of 'celestial aphids' or something hitching a ride and blessing his garden!
At the moment, spells with good and evil descriptors are pretty circular, being evil because they say they're evil, for the most part.
The trick is to 'evil them up' without adding unintended game effects, or free bonuses. I've seen some suggestions to 'evil something up' that unintentionally give them free powers, such as the notion that animate dead traps the soul of someone whose corpse you make into a zombie, which would allow one to destroy a demon, angel or god who used to be mortal, by finding their body and casting animate dead on it, sucking their outsider soul right out of the Abyss/Heaven/Nirvana and trapping it in their old bones. That's just silly, right there. Trap the soul is an *eighth level spell* and doesn't have the power to suck a soul out of it's Heavenly reward, or Hell's cruel torments, or right out of Pharasma's bony grasp. It's silly for animate dead to be able to do that.
Attempts to 'make infernal healing more evil' (or any evil, good, lawful or chaotic descriptors spells) need to be considered carefully, to avoid that sort of thing.
|
Drawing on Evil power doesn't make you Evil any more then drawing on Electric Power makes you Lightning. And while the rules govern how the spells interact with alignments, there is zero indication in the rules that casting them can change your alignment. In the event you want to houserule casting spells with Alignment changes your alignment, I look forward to easy Evil to Good conversion thanks to Protection from Evil.
The Rules don't support this. The GM is a jerk and your argument is meaningless."Evil: Spells that draw upon evil powers or conjure creatures from evil-aligned planes or with the evil subtype should have the evil descriptor."
The converse is true as well, if a spell is evil, it draws upon evil powers.
"Most of these descriptors have no game effect by themselves, but they govern how the spell interacts ... with alignment"
So yes, it is very much in the rules that [evil] spells are, evil and that they interact with alignment.
Occasionally of course a good person does a bad thing, and they are still a good person. However, someone who repeatedly and knowingly chooses to do a bad thing isn't really good anymore.
Infernal Healing was developed by Asmodeus, and he didn't do it because he is a lovable guy who doesn't want anyone to be hurt.
Balance wise, there probably isn't a good reason to have a non-evil version of the spell. However, in this case the flavor is the point of this particular spell.
|
|
I don't get it.
Everyone assumes that this spell is part of 'some nefarious scheme by Asmodeus to exert influence over more people and someday maybe he'll rule the world through it and puppies will always look sad and ice-cream will melt too quickly...' and so on and so forth.
And sure, it would be in character for the guy.
But seriously, maybe he just realised that he needed an evil aligned healing spell for his human clerics to cast since they're restricted from casting spells with the 'good' alignment. Sure he doesn't care about his mooks on the deep emotional level that all of the good gods care about theirs, but he probably still recognises that they operate better when undamaged.
None of the nefarious scheme fluff appears in my Inner Sea World Guide anyway.
Evil clerics can cast cure spells just fine, and even Heal. None of those are "good-aligned."
The [evil] descriptor means RAW that casting the spell is an Evil action on the not arguable because campaign setting related axis of good vs evil. I still don't get how people claim "is not evil beside the label".
This is a f@!+ing roleplaying game, do you expect the manual to give you accurate description on how to move your longsword each time you perform an attack? No, it just gives you the rules for the attack roll.
In the same way, Infernal Healing is evil because the manual says so. It's the DM job to adjudicate how they want to portray that in their own campaign. But the fact remains.
Infernal Healing is Evil, and using it is Evil. Full stop. If you want to play a Knight in Sour Armor is your choice, but wheter that is good or evil is not for you to decide. The Pathfinder Campaign Setting has a rigid and absolute morale scale witch is set in stone by the higher power. If you are playing a home-brewed setting instead, is for the DM to adjudicate based on his own idea of morality scales.
|
The [evil] descriptor means RAW that casting the spell is an Evil action on the not arguable because campaign setting related axis of good vs evil. I still don't get how people claim "is not evil beside the label".
This is a f+#@ing roleplaying game, do you expect the manual to give you accurate description on how to move your longsword each time you perform an attack? No, it just gives you the rules for the attack roll.
In the same way, Infernal Healing is evil because the manual says so. It's the DM job to adjudicate how they want to portray that in their own campaign. But the fact remains.
Infernal Healing is Evil, and using it is Evil. Full stop. If you want to play a Knight in Sour Armor is your choice, but wheter that is good or evil is not for you to decide. The Pathfinder Campaign Setting has a rigid and absolute morale scale witch is set in stone by the higher power. If you are playing a home-brewed setting instead, is for the DM to adjudicate based on his own idea of morality scales.
The argument is, if you'd read the thread, that casting infernal healing is about as evil as casting protection from evil is good. *shrugs* Whether it's RAW or not (it isn't, the "evil" descriptor doesn't make the action evil, it makes the spell evil), it's silly to think that casting IH could make you change alignments any more than casting Prot Evil.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The [evil] descriptor means RAW that casting the spell is an Evil action on the not arguable because campaign setting related axis of good vs evil. I still don't get how people claim "is not evil beside the label".
The game never says this.
"Evil Subtype: This subtype is usually applied to outsiders native to the evil-aligned outer planes. Evil outsiders are also called fiends. Most creatures that have this subtype also have evil alignments; however, if their alignments change, they still retain the subtype."
Evil subtype creatures don't even have to be evil!!!!
The [evil] descriptor means RAW that casting the spell is an Evil action on the not arguable because campaign setting related axis of good vs evil. I still don't get how people claim "is not evil beside the label".The game never says this.
"Evil Subtype: This subtype is usually applied to outsiders native to the evil-aligned outer planes. Evil outsiders are also called fiends. Most creatures that have this subtype also have evil alignments; however, if their alignments change, they still retain the subtype."
Evil subtype creatures don't even have to be evil!!!!
No, but it does say that creatures with the [evil] subtype always begin as evil but their alignments can change. I take from this statement that nothing is NATURALLY non-evil with an [evil] subtype, but in rare cases you might find a creature with that subtype who has changed alignments for some reason.
I would personally take it a step farther - nobody accidentally changes alignments (unless it's forced on them by magic or a curse, etc.). If the change of alignment is internal (meaning the creature changed its own alignment by choice), then FIRST the choice must be made to say "I don't like my current behavior and I think it's time for me to change my behavior to something I would like better". Then the behavior changes, then the alignment slowly changes to match the new behavior.
I don't think any creature with any alignment descriptor would ever make that decision consciously and of its own free will. If it has an alignment descriptor, then that creature is made, at least partially, of that alignment, almost as much as you and I are made, at least partially, of meat. Changing our meat to be something else is pretty much impossible (without magic or futuristic technology), and equally so, a creature with an alignment descriptor is incapable of changing its alignment without magic (etc.). But that's just my take, I don't think I can support that from RAW - it's just the way it makes sense to me.
No, but it does say that creatures with the [evil] subtype always begin as evil but their alignments can change. I take from this statement that nothing is NATURALLY non-evil with an [evil] subtype, but in rare cases you might find a creature with that subtype who has changed alignments for some reason.
I would personally take it a step farther - nobody accidentally changes alignments (unless it's forced on them by magic or a curse, etc.). If the change of alignment is internal (meaning the creature changed its own alignment by choice), then FIRST the choice must be made to say "I don't like my current behavior and I think it's time for me to change my behavior to something I would like better". Then the behavior changes, then the alignment slowly changes to match the new behavior.
I don't think any creature with any alignment descriptor would ever make that decision consciously and of its own free will. If it has an alignment descriptor, then that creature is made, at least partially, of that alignment, almost as much as you and I are made, at least partially, of meat. Changing our meat to be something else is pretty much impossible (without magic or futuristic technology), and equally so, a creature with an alignment descriptor is incapable of changing its alignment without magic (etc.). But that's just my take, I don't think I can support that from RAW - it's just the way it makes sense to me.
Back in the 3.5 days, there where instances of devils/demons that officially changed alignments of their own free will. They where presented as possible allies in an adventure in hell. There is no way to know if this thinking made it to pathfinder or not but original content seems opposite to your sense of right.
For me, [evil] is a more extreme version of growing up in an evil society. you most likely start with the alignment of where you start but circumstances may push into another.
As far as spells, [evil] is pretty much there to disallow some spells from divine casters and to be affected by the odd trait. It's no more an evil act than jaywalking is unlawful.
However, they do still count as evil (e.g. for detect/smite evil) regardless of their actual alignment. No matter how good your Succubus Paladin behaves, other paladins will have a hard time trusting her.
Evil subtype creatures don't even have to be evil!!!!
A Succubus paladin detects as evil, good and lawful. In a similar way, a neutral cleric of an evil god will detect as evil even though they're non-evil.
As to smite, it wouldn't work. Smite: "As a swift action, the paladin chooses one target within sight to smite. If this target is evil, the paladin adds her Cha bonus (if any) to her attack rolls and adds her paladin level to all damage rolls made against the target of her smite"
THEN
"If the target of smite evil is an outsider with the evil subtype, an evil-aligned dragon, or an undead creature, the bonus to damage on the first successful attack increases to 2 points of damage per level the paladin possesses. Regardless of the target, smite evil attacks automatically bypass any DR the creature might possess."
The first part doesn't work as the target isn't evil. The second part is bonus damage and does nothing as there is no initial damage. So the paladin is wasting smites on the non-evil creature that detected as evil.
|
|
However, they do still count as evil (e.g. for detect/smite evil) regardless of their actual alignment. No matter how good your Succubus Paladin behaves, other paladins will have a hard time trusting her.
Evil subtype creatures don't even have to be evil!!!!A Succubus paladin detects as evil, good and lawful. In a similar way, a neutral cleric of an evil god will detect as evil even though they're non-evil.
As to smite, it wouldn't work. Smite: "As a swift action, the paladin chooses one target within sight to smite. If this target is evil, the paladin adds her Cha bonus (if any) to her attack rolls and adds her paladin level to all damage rolls made against the target of her smite"
THEN
"If the target of smite evil is an outsider with the evil subtype, an evil-aligned dragon, or an undead creature, the bonus to damage on the first successful attack increases to 2 points of damage per level the paladin possesses. Regardless of the target, smite evil attacks automatically bypass any DR the creature might possess."
The first part doesn't work as the target isn't evil. The second part is bonus damage and does nothing as there is no initial damage. So the paladin is wasting smites on the non-evil creature that detected as evil.
Incorrect. Bestiary pg. 312:
"Any effect that depends on alignment affects a creature with this subtype as if the creature has an evil alignment, no matter what its alignment actually is."
She would even get a negative level from picking up a Holy Avenger.
|
|
However, they do still count as evil (e.g. for detect/smite evil) regardless of their actual alignment. No matter how good your Succubus Paladin behaves, other paladins will have a hard time trusting her.
Evil subtype creatures don't even have to be evil!!!!A Succubus paladin detects as evil, good and lawful. In a similar way, a neutral cleric of an evil god will detect as evil even though they're non-evil.
As to smite, it wouldn't work. Smite: "As a swift action, the paladin chooses one target within sight to smite. If this target is evil, the paladin adds her Cha bonus (if any) to her attack rolls and adds her paladin level to all damage rolls made against the target of her smite"
THEN
"If the target of smite evil is an outsider with the evil subtype, an evil-aligned dragon, or an undead creature, the bonus to damage on the first successful attack increases to 2 points of damage per level the paladin possesses. Regardless of the target, smite evil attacks automatically bypass any DR the creature might possess."
The first part doesn't work as the target isn't evil. The second part is bonus damage and does nothing as there is no initial damage. So the paladin is wasting smites on the non-evil creature that detected as evil.
Incorrect. Bestiary pg. 312:
"Any effect that depends on alignment affects a creature with this subtype as if the creature has an evil alignment, no matter what its alignment actually is."
She would even get a negative level from picking up a Holy Avenger.
The smite would still be wasted on the N cleric of an evil god, though. But, yeah, still works on the good succubus. Here's a question, though...would a paladin have to atone for smiting the succubus paladin?
EDUT: That's RAW, mind you. In my game a succubus wouldn't detect as evil if they didn't have the alignment. Though they probably wouldn't BE a succubus anymore.
However, they do still count as evil (e.g. for detect/smite evil) regardless of their actual alignment. No matter how good your Succubus Paladin behaves, other paladins will have a hard time trusting her.
Evil subtype creatures don't even have to be evil!!!!A Succubus paladin detects as evil, good and lawful. In a similar way, a neutral cleric of an evil god will detect as evil even though they're non-evil.
As to smite, it wouldn't work. Smite: "As a swift action, the paladin chooses one target within sight to smite. If this target is evil, the paladin adds her Cha bonus (if any) to her attack rolls and adds her paladin level to all damage rolls made against the target of her smite"
THEN
"If the target of smite evil is an outsider with the evil subtype, an evil-aligned dragon, or an undead creature, the bonus to damage on the first successful attack increases to 2 points of damage per level the paladin possesses. Regardless of the target, smite evil attacks automatically bypass any DR the creature might possess."
The first part doesn't work as the target isn't evil. The second part is bonus damage and does nothing as there is no initial damage. So the paladin is wasting smites on the non-evil creature that detected as evil.
Incorrect. Bestiary pg. 312:
"Any effect that depends on alignment affects a creature with this subtype as if the creature has an evil alignment, no matter what its alignment actually is."
She would even get a negative level from picking up a Holy Avenger.
Which is why she should invest in Use Magic Device to trick the device.
That doesn't work either.
Use magic Device lets you fake having/being something, like being of Good alignment. It does not in any way allow you to fake not being something. You still count as evil - you just can choose to count as Good too.
|
|
That doesn't work either.
Use magic Device lets you fake having/being something, like being of Good alignment. It does not in any way allow you to fake not being something. You still count as evil - you just can choose to count as Good too.
I don't know about Pathfinder, but that wasn't true in 3rd Ed. I can't remember which book it was in, but an example specifically called out was a good character using UMD to handle the Book of Vile Darkness without hurting themselves, by fooling the item into treating them as if they weren't good.
I don't know about Pathfinder, but that wasn't true in 3rd Ed. I can't remember which book it was in, but an example specifically called out was a good character using UMD to handle the Book of Vile Darkness without hurting themselves, by fooling the item into treating them as if they weren't good.That doesn't work either.
Use magic Device lets you fake having/being something, like being of Good alignment. It does not in any way allow you to fake not being something. You still count as evil - you just can choose to count as Good too.
Exactly, UMD is awesome.