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Wait, what does "dark neutral" mean?
Morally questionable, but not outright evil.
Getting your blood from condemned criminals, with you as their legally sanctioned mode of execution maybe.
I mean, here's my concept for a "friendly Lich" NPC.
Nearing the twilight of his existence, with a lot more to do NPC decides "Lichdom" is his ticket. Obsessively scrying various penal institutions, he would find prisoners the night before they were set to be executed, and visit them offering them the opportunity to come with him for a second chance (if they declined, he left them to be executed).
Bringing them back to his lair, he would re-try the accused using magic to ferret out what really happened, and if they were found to be innocent they were allowed to go free, and be dropped off anywhere they wanted in the world with a pouch full of gold for their trouble so they can make a new opportunity for themselves. Anybody who was found to be truly guilty of crime that merits execution, however, was kept imprisoned in the would-be-Lich's lair. (Anybody who falls in between "innocent" and "sufficiently guilty to deserve death" would simply be indentured for a period commensurate to the severity of their wrongdoing). When the number of re-condemned was sufficient for the liching ritual, the plan is to use them however is needed.
That's at least a plausible Lich concept that doesn't have a really, really long path towards redemption, right?
Not to mention the Oracle, Witch or Shaman with no allignment restrictions....Clerics have it, and they are a both a common class and the one many people go to for healing anyway. You just need a cleric of a neutral god or an evil god. Asmodeus seems like a go to for this, since he is an evil god with a fairly public church.
.....
Yes, but I think clerics of neutral and an accepted evil god are more common. oracles are almost unique individuals, while witches and shamans might face enough persecution that they can be hard to find (although they might be more accessible for undead that are also shunned by society).
You don't need to worship a Neutral or Evil god to cast Inflict anyway. you're all thinking of Channel Energy.
Yeah, but the ones with spontaneous casting seem more accessible (since they don't need to stop for 15 minutes and prepare it, since who slots in inflict spells?), and less like to just try to destroy you with cure spells (clerics of good gods and all; neutral might not be much better, but you might get an abadar cleric to do it for cash)
And really, for a party healing, the channel energy seems like a better deal. AoE, a nice set of healing dice, and it isn't like most clerics that channel negative energy would be using their uses for the day for much else (since it is either for healing undead or doing battle with the living; positive clerics might us up their uses for any number of random injuries suffered by the congregation).
Inflict wounds spells do not have the evil descriptor for the record.Using it to hurt the living kinda does... and not that many classes have access to it.
Same reasoning could be applied to any damaging spell tho
What about using the worst of the worst criminals who have been legally sentenced to execution? :p
I could totally see a dark and ruthless nation where the worst criminals serve to create a lichdom pool for a certain soellcasting elite.
Is destroying their soul evil? Any more than normal capital punishment? Where is the line? And after all evil souls fuel the evil outer planes.
Wait, what does "dark neutral" mean?
It's the excuse Chaotic Neutral players use when they want to commit evil but still keep their neutral tag.
Is destroying their soul evil? Any more than normal capital punishment? Where is the line? And after all evil souls fuel the evil outer planes.
yes. Exceedingly so. Excessively evil. The fact that is evil is literally every single thing you learn about daemons outside of the horsemen. It will get you even more on pharasma's hit list than just being undead.
And sure, the souls go to fuel the evil outer planes.. but anything you do would be a drop in the bucket in terms of the grand scheme of the entire universe of mortal souls. 'eliminating evil life' is more of a goal for qlippoth than for you.
Another problem with cutting off evil souls on a routine scale is that the evil planes would not like it. The entire flow of souls in the outerplanes mostly works based off of the idea that everyone generally 'plays nice'. Trying to starve out a plane means it will stop playing nice (and even when the evil planes 'play nice', they have industrial soul trades and mass kidnappings from the mortal realm... imagine what would happen if they got together and got serious).
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So if a lemure is created from a mortal soul, is permanently destroying that lemure evil? What about killing a soul you know is going to become a lemure?
This rule seems a bit clunky and inconsistent.
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So if a lemure is created from a mortal soul, is permanently destroying that lemure evil? What about killing a soul you know is going to become a lemure?
This rule seems a bit clunky and inconsistent.
I'm like 90% sure that killing a Demon or whatever doesn't destroy the soul, it just destroys that specific Lemure or whatever. The soul-stuff goes back into the plane it came from and is used to make a new Lemure.
It's hard to actually FIND any of this information because Pathfinder's lore is scattered among so many different books in tiny snippets though.
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I thought the rule was that if you kill a demon on its own plane, it's dead for good. That's why it can't be resurrected.
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IT is dead for good, the raw material it's made from is not. Least that's how I understand it.
EX you kill Jimmy the Balor, Jimmy's gone forever. Jimmy's soul corpse, however, is repurposed into 10, 000 Lemures.
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Golarion lore is very hard to track.
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So if a lemure is created from a mortal soul, is permanently destroying that lemure evil? What about killing a soul you know is going to become a lemure?
This rule seems a bit clunky and inconsistent.
I think the difference there is that the soul itself is weak and easily destroyed when not part of a physical form. It is kind of like killing a baby.
The outsiders formed from those souls are less defenseless, and few would harp on you for killing a creature that attacked you, or one that served a creature you were at war with (at least, not any more than they would for killing a mortal and engaging in a war).
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So if the lemure was captive and unable to hurt you, it would be evil to destroy it?
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Wait, what does "dark neutral" mean?
The hidden, super-secret alignment axis! You have Dark Neutral, Lawful Dark and Chaotic Dark. It's for all those Drizzt-clones, the entirety of the Warhammer universe, Anakin and as Darth Vader at the end of episode VI (as opposed to lawful evil as he is throughout the series), some renditions of Batman, and the Punisher fall into.
Basically edgy characters. This is directly opposed by the Stupid axis (Lawful Stupid, Neutral Stupid, Chaotic Stupid).
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So if the lemure was captive and unable to hurt you, it would be evil to destroy it?Depends. Did you use a box propped up by a stick and a trail of candy to capture it?
I cannot tell you the number of times I've fallen for that... but, you know, candy.
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I cannot tell you the number of times I've fallen for that... but, you know, candy.So if the lemure was captive and unable to hurt you, it would be evil to destroy it?Depends. Did you use a box propped up by a stick and a trail of candy to capture it?
*nods*
Same.
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Is destroying their soul evil? Any more than normal capital punishment? Where is the line? And after all evil souls fuel the evil outer planes.yes. Exceedingly so. Excessively evil. The fact that is evil is literally every single thing you learn about daemons outside of the horsemen. It will get you even more on pharasma's hit list than just being undead.
And sure, the souls go to fuel the evil outer planes.. but anything you do would be a drop in the bucket in terms of the grand scheme of the entire universe of mortal souls. 'eliminating evil life' is more of a goal for qlippoth than for you.
Another problem with cutting off evil souls on a routine scale is that the evil planes would not like it. The entire flow of souls in the outerplanes mostly works based off of the idea that everyone generally 'plays nice'. Trying to starve out a plane means it will stop playing nice (and even when the evil planes 'play nice', they have industrial soul trades and mass kidnappings from the mortal realm... imagine what would happen if they got together and got serious).
Your statements are contradictory Either starving the outer planes of dozens is impactful and would summon the rage of divine beings, or it has no tangible impact and thus none would care. To. Argue that it would have zero impact and yet still incur the wrath of the beyond does not appear logical to me.
Besides, if this process is so evil, then sooner or later the outer planes will get some of those liches back as a reward. And if it really is more even than killing fiends themselves, which is totally debatable, it still does not require every participant to be evil. The whole scheme could be run by lawful evil types, without necessarily excluding non evil casters from the "promotion". Heck, maybe it's even mandatory in that nation for all eligible casters to be transformed.
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Is destroying their soul evil? Any more than normal capital punishment? Where is the line? And after all evil souls fuel the evil outer planes.yes. Exceedingly so. Excessively evil. The fact that is evil is literally every single thing you learn about daemons outside of the horsemen. It will get you even more on pharasma's hit list than just being undead.
And sure, the souls go to fuel the evil outer planes.. but anything you do would be a drop in the bucket in terms of the grand scheme of the entire universe of mortal souls. 'eliminating evil life' is more of a goal for qlippoth than for you.
Another problem with cutting off evil souls on a routine scale is that the evil planes would not like it. The entire flow of souls in the outerplanes mostly works based off of the idea that everyone generally 'plays nice'. Trying to starve out a plane means it will stop playing nice (and even when the evil planes 'play nice', they have industrial soul trades and mass kidnappings from the mortal realm... imagine what would happen if they got together and got serious).
Your statements are contradictory Either starving the outer planes of dozens is impactful and would summon the rage of divine beings, or it has no tangible impact and thus none would care. To. Argue that it would have zero impact and yet still incur the wrath of the beyond does not appear logical to me.
Besides, if this process is so evil, then sooner or later the outer planes will get some of those liches back as a reward. And if it really is more even than killing fiends themselves, which is totally debatable, it still does not require every participant to be evil. The whole scheme could be run by lawful evil types, without necessarily excluding non evil casters from the "promotion". Heck, maybe it's even mandatory in that nation for all eligible casters to be transformed.
No there not. Just because there is no immediate universe spanning repercussions (that you're aware of) for destroying a few souls, not an outsider, a soul, due to their being innumerous souls in existence does not mean you won't get put on a blacklist by the gods for doing so. F&+&ing with souls is something you just don't do.
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So what? That's beside the point. Being put on a blacklist does not in any way make such a system not work. The after life already sucks foe the evils. Also what happens after death is no longer in a player's control anyways, afaik petitioners don't even remember their lives and thus aren't played by anyone. Pissing off Pharasma isn't evil in itself, either. It's debatable how much others would care.
One doesn't need to be evil to benefit or suffer from an evil system. A system does not need to last millenia for it to be available to PCs. A legalized destruction of souls would never be able to reach a scale warranting unstoppable divine interference, and would yield many mitigating factors to ease otherwordly wrath. Such a system would likely be run by evil characters but would not have to only benefit evil characters. There are many morally debatable aspects that would also allow great involvement from at least neutral characters.
Also comparing a soul to a child is absurd. A child is innocent and a soul is not. The destruction of souls is also innevitable. Who would seriously preffer an eternity of torment, until the agony dissolves them and while not even knowing what they are punished for, than an early blissful annihilation of the soul thay skips the agony part? Saying the destruction of souls is incontestably evil is akin to arguing that the lethal injection should be replaced by death by starvation, that way the death comes on its own instead of by an action.
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So if the lemure was captive and unable to hurt you, it would be evil to destroy it?
Are you trying to start a 'will the paladin fall' thread? We can't agree on this in the real world I doubt it would ever be a consensus here in the forums :)
The best answer I can give you is to quote George Carlin...
Mortal sin had to be a grievous offense, sufficient reflection and full consent of the will. Ya had'ta WANNA! In fact, WANNA was a sin all by itself. "Thou Shalt Not WANNA". If you woke up in the morning and said, "I'm going down to 42nd street and commit a mortal sin!" Save your car fare; you did it, man!
That's actually not a bad yardstick to use for evil/non-evil acts. In the grand scheme of things 'Good' is supposed to always hope for and strive to redeem - as such they shouldn't kill unless they have to.
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Ignoring the flood of Strawmanning you just threw out all over the place for no reason (who brought up children?), a soul ceasing to exist is bad, but it's not evil in itself. Destroying a soul so it ceases to exist is evil.
This is covered in The Redemption Engine by James Sutter. ALL the gods care about souls since they make up existence. Pharasma not only cares but is the one charged with taking care of these type of situations.
As for the evil nation that widespread destroys souls? That would get nuked so fast it isn't even funny.
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So if the lemure was captive and unable to hurt you, it would be evil to destroy it?Are you trying to start a 'will the paladin fall' thread? We can't agree on this in the real world I doubt it would ever be a consensus here in the forums :)
The best answer I can give you is to quote George Carlin...
Mortal sin had to be a grievous offense, sufficient reflection and full consent of the will. Ya had'ta WANNA! In fact, WANNA was a sin all by itself. "Thou Shalt Not WANNA". If you woke up in the morning and said, "I'm going down to 42nd street and commit a mortal sin!" Save your car fare; you did it, man!That's actually not a bad yardstick to use for evil/non-evil acts. In the grand scheme of things 'Good' is supposed to always hope for and strive to redeem - as such they shouldn't kill unless they have to.
No, that's a very specific type of Good but it's not the only Good, nor is it always the right Good.
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I thought the rule was that if you kill a demon on its own plane, it's dead for good. That's why it can't be resurrected.Resurrection as an individual is different from the question of what happens to its soul energy. From the River of Souls article in Mummy's Mask 6, the last step in the life cycle of an outsider:
An outsider meets its end. Its aligned quintessence merges with its home plane or escapes onto the planes, eventually being claimed by the Maelstrom.
If it's on its home plane its soul energy (quintessence) goes back to the plane. If it doesn't it leaks out wherever it died and is mostly wasted/lost from the point of view of the aligned plane trying to grow/sustain itself. All outer planes are gradually worn away at their border with the Maelstrom, which at least partially offsets the incoming soul energy of dying mortals. The Malestrom's energies in turn gather at a point called the Antipode, which feeds into the Positive Energy plane to recycle all this stuff into new souls.
The multiverse is a big, constantly recycling calculation machine to measure the relative success of the competing alignments over the aeons and across all of time.
Those interested in this should read Mummy's Mask 6, and all the aeon/manasputra bestiary entries. The Groetus article in Inner Sea Faiths and the background on the First World in that recent book also give details on the overall cosmic plan's early and final steps.
No, that's a very specific type of Good but it's not the only Good, nor is it always the right Good.
As I said - no consensus will be had.
Good reason why scrapping alignment from your game is a good idea - and why I think the old order/chaos system was better for a game system.
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No, that's a very specific type of Good but it's not the only Good, nor is it always the right Good.As I said - no consensus will be had.
Good reason why scrapping alignment from your game is a good idea - and why I think the old order/chaos system was better for a game system.
I like the alignment system.
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Destroying a soul as in melting it into raw soulstuff or as in poof its gone forever?
I never saw them actually detailing the specifics.
Destroying a soul as in melting it into raw soulstuff or as in poof its gone forever?
I never saw them actually detailing the specifics.
It could be either. A common use of souls is as material components, where they are expended and POOFed.
But they could also be cannibalized to make magic items, turned into liquid and dust forms, and even made into ink. Daemons are the specialists at these varied forms of use. Generally though,
Most methods of using souls extinguish them completely, consigning them to oblivion.
So for things other than putting souls into intelligent magic items (which isn't even guaranteed to still have the actual soul, instead of crude copy, as debated later in the same text), almost anything you do with the soul destroys it.
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Ok different way to ask it.
Dissipating energy or actually removing it from existence?
I am kinda asking is there conservation of quintessence, first law of ... souldynamics.
Because "consigning them to oblivion" can mean both.
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I think you wipe the information content completely, which is what the multiverse really cares about. I don't think there's an important limit on available soul energy for the positive energy plane to use.
I think you wipe the information content completely, which is what the multiverse really cares about. I don't think there's an important limit on available soul energy for the positive energy plane to use.
yeah, because everything comes from and goes back to the maelstrom.
That is the basic set up of the setting- you start with the primodial chaos, and then suddenly stuff happens and that stuff decides that it enjoys continued happening. The more transitory stuff decided they didn't like that, and thus the first chaos/order war happened in ancient times.
Later, various planes came into existence and so on.
So really, while I am not sure about the exact balance of planes and the flow of souls... I am going to assume that they continue to use the primodial ooze of teh maelstrom to continue getting new souls.
So the first law of souldynamics is that there is not a conservation of souls stuff. Things appear from nowhere and eventually return to it.
Dungeons and Dragons Ebberon setting has the Undying that are healed by positive energy, I don't know if anybody else posted that. But the court of the Undying are good aligned deities
This argument can be solved by one simple answer: Designer Command Theory and genre tropes. The designers of the PF game thought it was appropriate and in genre for all undead to be evil (save for a few examples, such as ghosts). Ultimately it doesn't matter what metaphysical/philsophical reasons for it as those are largely setting defined. In the game by default, it's EVIL because it's EEEEEEVIIILLLL!
I however disagree with all undead being evil because many are self aware, self-awareness leads to the ability to make choices. Choices may need to be made to determine survival.
example: does the undead have to feed on intelligent life to live? If yes, can it feed on willing participants? If yes, it can choose to only feed when necessary and be as "good" as it can. Insert Hollywood tropes here.
Also, is there a reason for not wanting to play a campaign of evil undead? Being a hunting party of nasty ghouls or wights or spooky poltergeists? Maybe an attic whisperer looking for an eternal playmate?
Forgotten Realms had LG liches in it. The key to that? They're elves, so they get special rules that don't apply to anybody else, you see.
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Blegh, FR's elves...
But the court of the Undying are good aligned deities
As I recall, they're not good, they're neutral. Most dieties in Eberron are some flavor of grey, no matter what their alignment is. Alignment is simply not that strong a force in that setting.
Lots of undead have been sitting in books and legends waiting to be made into game characters.
A phantom hitch hiker is a dead person fueled by not realizing they are dead. That doesn't go on very long, as they are going to encounter clues.
My prepetitioners dwell in the Land of the Dead which is an overlap of the land of the living, astral, ethereal, and shadow. They can effect the land of the living by indirectly animating or possessing people and things. If magically called back they have levels in spooky, but not necessarily evil, prestige classes. In the homebrew topic, Goth's freakshow, I go into the classes in detail. This topic is headed for homebrew. Why fight it?
Someone was talking about skins, stuffed and animated, who have to go to some lengths to keep from falling apart. They are intelligent animated objects. No negitive energy used.
The Undying Court is Neutral Good. It's not that the deities of Eberron are morally gray, it's that they may not even exist, and the worshipers pretty much do whatever they like in their name.
Prana ghosts aren't undead, though.
It all depends on the setting. For stock Golarion, undead are evil and meant to be destroyed, no matter who or what they are, unless you worship da evil gods like Zon-Kuthon or Urgathoa or the Kardashian Sisters 3. Stop and do not pass go to get your 200$. Personally, that level of it's evil and it must die is a bit too one dimensional for me, so it's quite possible to have non-evil or even good undead in my Golarion games. In other settings, they exist in a variety of a methods and ways. This is an old argument though, since we had an entire realm of Ravenloft devoted to playing undead characters (with a fun system actually) back in 2nd Edition, and lots of fantasy/urban fantasy books cover good or neutral undead (mostly vampires, though some zombies and ghosts, and it's kind of hard to make sparkly zombies appealing...)
Unless PF is drastically different to 3.5, the mechanical requirements for being a Lich are must be 11th caster level and have Craft Wondrous Item. The actual "unspeakable evil" part is basically just flavour text. (And if WotC had wanted it to be mechanically Evil they should have been *far* more specific. They don't even have an [Evil] spell like Animate Dead a requirement!)
(DMs not wanting characters to become Liches are rather better served by saying "no, it's too unbalanced for a PC" than "no, because it's very Evil for some reason no-one even attempted to do more than vaguely hint at, presumably to discourage PCs from doing it" in my opinion.)
And in 3.5, you could become a Lich simply by becoming a 20th level Dread Necromancer (nongood).
And further to the "undead not inherently Evil" 3.5 sometimes remembered it had, the Pale Master Presidge Class (also known as "hah, no material costs for Animate Dead 1/day!!!") was also only nongood alignment.
I had enormous fun with my Neutral Necromancer/Pale Master (who was, quite, quite bonkers, but a preponent of "undead yes, unpeople no").
We have never quite revisited that game, but my intention was for me to get my sidekick as a Lich who had become a Lich by beating up and murdering chickens*, which rather fitted the level of the party...
So in 3.5, it was quite possible to have neutral Liches.
(The debate on whether Undead wer automatically Evil or not was a common topic on WotC bvack in the day, however.)
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All that said, our most recent new party (albiet in Rolemaster) consists entirely of Evil Liches (albeit Spirit-Bound, not Phylcatery-Bound), so there's that.
*This feat is achived, for a 7th level character (and thus with the LA taking it to the point I ould have it as a minion) by use of the +1 caster level Ioun Stone (which the character would have lost since), plus Divine Metamagic: Persistance Spell (which also would be traded out before game use) and Consumptive Field[i/]. (The process would be as followes: Every day, he'd DMM the spell (so it would last 24 hours)and then beat up a bag of chickens (to 0 or less hp), which would then die by [i]Consumptive Field and boost his Caster Level by 3. This - with the iuon stone - would get him to Caster level 11 sufficient for that day's Phylactery creation.)
(The reason for wanting a Lich specifically was that as a Leadershipo minion, it didn't matter if he got all blowed up occasionally, taking a load of pain out of both mine and the DM's arses having to deal with a new character every time.)
Unless PF is drastically different to 3.5, the mechanical requirements for being a Lich are must be 11th caster level and have Craft Wondrous Item. The actual "unspeakable evil" part is basically just flavour text. (And if WotC had wanted it to be mechanically Evil they should have been *far* more specific. They don't even have an [Evil] spell like Animate Dead a requirement!)
ut before game use) and Consumptive Field[i/]. (The...
PF isn't 3.5. There are built in flavor differences, including undead being evil by default, barring unique exceptions. And in Pathfinder pathways to lichdom do have one thing in common... an act, ritual, whatever that involves a major evil act... frequently of mass murder.
Whatever WOTC intended is fairly irrelevant, as this is not, and never has been, their game.
PF isn't 3.5. There are built in flavor differences, including undead being evil by default, barring unique exceptions. And in Pathfinder pathways to lichdom do have one thing in common... an act, ritual, whatever that involves a major evil act... frequently of mass murder.
Though Liches ought to be sufficiently rare that each one is a unique exception, and there are some strange Liches in Golarion (like Arazni who got turned into a Lich by someone else after she had died some 70 years prior.) There are also canonical liches on Golarion whose path to Lichdom involved "killing a whole bunch of Goblins" which is something good aligned PCs do all the time.
The other thing we don't know is where exactly the game the OP is talking about is taking place. The thing about "all undead are evil and all routes to lichdom involve mass murder" is probably more specific to Golarion than other places the rest of the rules could apply.
Here's the thing with Golarion: Anything done for the purpose of gaining power is evil. At least according to SKR and James Jacobs' logic.
If you drink blood for fun, potentially evil, potentially not.
If you drink blood to get a power-up it's all evil all the time.
If you kill mounds and mounds of goblins as part of your adventure, no big
If you kill mounds and mounds of goblins to complete your Lich ritual, it's evil.
It's f~#~ing stupid but it's internally consistent at least.
I think you regain sanity if you read it the other way around.
Evil things do not make you evil.
Evil things are done by evil people.