BTW, can anybody explain the de-Evil-ization of UndeathThe Pact Worlds embrace diversity.
Apparently.
Doesn't answer the question though.
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Well the RAW answer as far as whether using Drift engines is evil or not is: No. No it isn't evil. Otherwise the rules would say that it is evil.
The RAI answer is likely, "No. No because we want you to play the game without a stick in the mud space paladin deciding you have to die because you want to travel somewhere."
The common sense answer... is hard to explain. The Dead Suns argument is hard to show that it is evil because, say, because theoretically I could use a Drift engine and have it do some good too. What if Drifting frees some Good outsider who was trapped in an interdimensional prison? You don't know that it COULD help people? See? MY previous comment is... sketchy at best and definitely laughable. You don't know whether or not using the Drift will cause something good to happen, something bad to happen, or nothing really of note to happen.
That's neutral. And as far as screwing up reality, I don't think anyone has to be worried that small chunks of infinite planes are being torn out and thrown into the Drift. Let me repeat that. Infinite planes. Chunks of infinite planes.
Infinite Planes (and demiplanes) that are now bleeding together faster than the Maelstrom's doing.
As for doing good, yes you could free a Good outsider who was trapped. You could also free Rovagug.
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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.
We Proteans support mini-Maelstroms.
This new space paladin thread is slightly more entertaining then the old one.
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We Proteans support mini-Maelstroms.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.
Oh Gods, you all have probably been throwing out Orchestra level performances ever since Drift Engines became widespread XD
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Oh Gods, you all have probably been throwing out Orchestra level performances ever since Drift Engines became widespread XDWe Proteans support mini-Maelstroms.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.
We are currently sipping cocktails and looking trough the Ikea guide for ideas how to decorate our new summer homes.
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Yes, theoretically that is possible. Rovagug could be freed. So could any number of good aligned forces. Neutral. Doesn't have to balance out perfectly. Could be neutral leaning good or evil. But point being the fact that it could go either way, and the fact that the rules don't say that its evil, and the fact that it is allowed it doesn't affect your standing in SF Society at all leads one to think that it's fine.
Putting it another way, is experimentation with, heck I don't know... nuclear energy inherently evil because there is a chance things could go wrong and kill a LOT of people? Is using fossil fuels inherently evil because in the long run wrong because it will screw up the environment to such as extent that it might kill lots of people? Is getting into a car itself inherently evil because there is a chance that I might hit someone? After all, "I am risking the death of other creatures for my gain."
Or is it fair to say that the odds of that happening are so ASTRONOMICALLY small that it is a neutral action? It's not like the usage of cars ISN'T the cause of many deaths. 40k people died from automobile related events last year. It must be evil to use cars! If they didn't exist 40k people would still be alive!
You keep saying 40K you made me think warhammer. Now there mode of space travel that is EVIL. It literally uses the abyss like teleport uses the astral. It just takes longer and demons can get in.
Yes, theoretically that is possible. Rovagug could be freed. So could any number of good aligned forces. Neutral. Doesn't have to balance out perfectly. Could be neutral leaning good or evil. But point being the fact that it could go either way, and the fact that the rules don't say that its evil, and the fact that it is allowed it doesn't affect your standing in SF Society at all leads one to think that it's fine.
Putting it another way, is experimentation with, heck I don't know... nuclear energy inherently evil because there is a chance things could go wrong and kill a LOT of people? Is using fossil fuels inherently evil because in the long run wrong because it will screw up the environment to such as extent that it might kill lots of people? Is getting into a car itself inherently evil because there is a chance that I might hit someone? After all, "I am risking the death of other creatures for my gain."
Or is it fair to say that the odds of that happening are so ASTRONOMICALLY small that it is a neutral action? It's not like the usage of cars ISN'T the cause of many deaths. 40k people died from automobile related events last year. It must be evil to use cars! If they didn't exist 40k people would still be alive!
The thing with cars that makes this a false equation is that you are responsible for only your driving and watching out for other drivers. With the Drift it's the equivalent of every time you start your car a bomb goes off somewhere, sometimes it might destroy just inanimate objects, sometimes it might get some people.
This happens every time someone activates a Drift Engine, every time. It's not "astronomically small", a chunk of a Plane gets ripped out every time, there's no exact numbers for how big the chunk can be (to my knowledge) but going off of Dead Suns the size can be absolutely massive. And there's probably millions of ships Drifting every day.
If you could only set it to take a bite out of the abyss each time. That would mildly annoy those demons!
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Is getting into a car itself inherently evil because there is a chance that I might hit someone? After all, "I am risking the death of other creatures for my gain."
Unfortunately, yes. Not evil enough to push us into full-blown Evil, but still not-good unless the purpose of the journey is so important that it justifies participation in the collective mass human sacrifice of thousands of people on the roads while converting irreplaceable fossil fuels into pollution. Of course, some journeys are that important - ambulances, transporting food. Some surely aren't - "I could easily walk there I'll drive because I'm feeling lazy and I'll drive to the gym later to get more exercise to make up for it." And many more are in a grey area.
That's the world we live in. There aren't many Paladins.
I think we should take all of our pollution and send it to the abyss I bet they wouldn't even notice. I am personally for public transportation. If it were up to me it would be monorails! Do you think monorails are secretly fed off infants and puppies? I hope not. There would just be no winning.
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Lets go with the worst case scenario, eh? Lets say theoretically drifting can free Rovagug and lets assume that the combined efforts of all the other gods for some reason cannot beat him again. Lets calculate some odds, eh?
9 afterlives means 9 planes (lets not even get into the question of if each layer of Hell is infinite).
Astral+Ethereal+Shadow+Dimension of Dreams is 4 more.
Elemental Planes is 4 more.
Positive+Negative Energy Planes is 2 more.
Plus all the demi planes which may or may not be infinite.
That gives me a 1 in (19 x Infinity) chance that I'll free Rovagug. I'll take those odds.
As for the bomb going of somewhere in those 19 infinities, isn't that also a chance you take every time you, again, jump into a car? That you'll kill someone or multiple people? Taking a look at the numbers again, I only gave you the answer for people in the US. There are over a million people killed by cars each year. That's a LOT of people. So again, cars must be evil right? Because each time you jump into one, you don't know if you're going to end someone's life?
EDIT for Matthew:
See, if we are going with that argument, I'll throw my hands up in the air because I personally don't know how to respond to that. I'll concede to someone who thinks using cars are evil. But not to the logic that using cars AREN'T evil but drifitng is.
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Heck every time I sneeze I kill like a small city. It doesn't stop me.
"As for the bomb going of somewhere in those 19 infinities, isn't that also a chance you take every time you, again, jump into a car? That you'll kill someone or multiple people? Taking a look at the numbers again, I only gave you the answer for people in the US. There are over a million people killed by cars each year. That's a LOT of people. So again, cars must be evil right? Because each time you jump into one, you don't know if you're going to end someone's life?"
Yes you do know for the most part, people don't just drop dead somewhere when you start your car. This it too much of an in-equivalent comparison, since you can also wreck your ship while in the Drift.
Drifting is not the same as driving, where you are keenly aware of what all you can do (i.e. wrecking, hitting someone), when you Drift a place somewhere gets ripped apart into the Drift. The closest actual equivalence that I can think of would be a bomb going off every time you start your car, not just driving it and the chance of wrecking and hitting a pedestrian.
"That gives me a 1 in (19 x Infinity) chance that I'll free Rovagug. I'll take those odds."
You're not the only one Drifting though, and as Dead Suns shows, that cataclysmic chance can very well be hit.
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You know actually I kind of want to agree with Matthew driving a car is an evil act in a way. Pollution, risk, draining resources. heck if you habitually speed in urban areas you might as well shift your alignment now. Drunk driving That has got to be a CE act.
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...
This happens every time someone activates a Drift Engine, every time. It's not "astronomically small",
I don't understand why you are saying the chunks are always large enough to be an object, location or person.
From the core book it says verbatim "a tiny portion of a random plane."
This does not imply the size of something important. The incident in Dead Suns
Is concerning a rare occurrence. If sizes of planes being deposited from Drift use were common there would be large chunks of random planes and demiplanes clogging all space around Absolom Station.
After all, the Drift has been in common use for hundreds of years. How many vessels do you think have drifted directly toward the Starstone and arrived at Absolom Station in 300 years?
To say that "This happens every time" where This equals "Something important is ripped out of a plane and embedded in the Material Plane" happens every time is an exaggeration. Something happens every time. But Dead Suns or a Dead Suns scale event does not happen every time. This is demonstrable in the lore and sort of common sense. The AP is about something that happened that is interesting and rare.
Yes, inevitably the universe will be shredded into a Maelstrom of chaos soup. No, there is no clear evidence that is happening at the rate implied by you Rysky.
Someone used the example of the Star Trek:TNG Episode "Force of Nature": in which the Federation discovers that using Warp Drive at a factor over five causes sever damage to spacetime itself. If you like that as a better analogy, it's there.
As far as the difference in evil between very slowly killing a planet and very slowly bringing about the apocalypse I don't think the Starfinder or Pathfinder alignment system tracks degrees of that nature. Both things are evil acts according to the proposed logic, or both things are not.
Starfinder Society Developer
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Before this grows out of hand...
Using the Drift is not inherently an evil action. Similar to how a car causes some pollution in the atmosphere of our world, the act of driving a car doesn't make you evil. Obvious statement, but... GMs should never consider applying Infamy for travelling through the Drift.
Also, please stop with the "Undead Alignment" discussions in this thread. It's not the place to talk about it, as it already has several other homes on these boards.
Thanks!
My apologies for not being clear. I was not saying something important was ripped out of a Plane each and every time. I was saying that a piece of a Plane is ripped out every time someone Drifts.
As for the size, we don't know. It could be the size of your fist, it could be the size of a city. Specifics aren't nailed down.
"But Dead Suns or a Dead Suns scale event does not happen every time."
But it can and does happen, which is the problem. Saying a possible doomsday event happens "rarely" does not assuage things.
"This is demonstrable in the lore"
What lore? The game just came out.
"and sort of common sense."
Ripping apart planes to make things easier yourself is the exact opposite of common sense I'm pretty sure.
"No, there is no clear evidence that is happening at the rate implied by you Rysky."
I never implied a rate, other than it is happening faster, which it is. Without the Drift it would not have increased.
Using the Drift is not inherently an evil action.
Okies, but what about when you Drift and now there's bisected angel bits floating around everywhere?
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Using the Drift is not inherently an evil action.Okies, but what about when you Drift and now there's bisected angel bits floating around everywhere?
If it was bisected demon bits, would it be a good act?
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Lore refers the the text of stories, rumors histories and what is often referred to as 'fluff' in the text of the game. A body of knowledge about a subject. Sorry that wasn't clear. The game just came out, but the authors and developers provide us with what is known about the world...
I wasn't saying that ripping apart planes to make things easier was common sense. Sorry if that was confusing. It's common sense to assume that if large pieces of planes were deposited in the material plane at a rate of any great frequency then places like Absalom would be massive clouds of chaos and debris from these planes. The chaos and debris from the Armada are just squatters, not chunks of other planes, hehe.
"A bomb goes off"
"Every time"
These statements make it sound like every use of Drift is a catastrophe. That's an implied rate, however vague. It's false.
If you cause something terrible to happen by using a Drift drive it's an accident, not a premeditated act of evil.
If it was bisected demon bits, would it be a good act?Using the Drift is not inherently an evil action.Okies, but what about when you Drift and now there's bisected angel bits floating around everywhere?
No, but then you can kinda see the Quandaries of indirectly and randomly killing stuff indiscriminately across the planes.
No, but then you can kinda see the Quandaries of indirectly and randomly killing stuff indiscriminately across the planes.If it was bisected demon bits, would it be a good act?Using the Drift is not inherently an evil action.Okies, but what about when you Drift and now there's bisected angel bits floating around everywhere?
And what if you manage to drag a powerful angel out of the demiplane it had been imprisoned in? Is that also an evil act?
I was typing up a different response, RakeleerRR, but if you're just going to devolve into snarku insults there's not really any point in continuing this.
And what if you manage to drag a powerful angel out of the demiplane it had been imprisoned in? Is that also an evil act?No, but then you can kinda see the Quandaries of indirectly and randomly killing stuff indiscriminately across the planes.If it was bisected demon bits, would it be a good act?Using the Drift is not inherently an evil action.Okies, but what about when you Drift and now there's bisected angel bits floating around everywhere?
No, but what if you free Rovagug?
No, but what if you free Rovagug?And what if you manage to drag a powerful angel out of the demiplane it had been imprisoned in? Is that also an evil act?No, but then you can kinda see the Quandaries of indirectly and randomly killing stuff indiscriminately across the planes.If it was bisected demon bits, would it be a good act?Using the Drift is not inherently an evil action.Okies, but what about when you Drift and now there's bisected angel bits floating around everywhere?
Eh, Rovagug's dead anyway.
Eh, Rovagug's dead anyway.No, but what if you free Rovagug?And what if you manage to drag a powerful angel out of the demiplane it had been imprisoned in? Is that also an evil act?No, but then you can kinda see the Quandaries of indirectly and randomly killing stuff indiscriminately across the planes.If it was bisected demon bits, would it be a good act?Using the Drift is not inherently an evil action.Okies, but what about when you Drift and now there's bisected angel bits floating around everywhere?
No he's not.
No he's not.Eh, Rovagug's dead anyway.No, but what if you free Rovagug?And what if you manage to drag a powerful angel out of the demiplane it had been imprisoned in? Is that also an evil act?No, but then you can kinda see the Quandaries of indirectly and randomly killing stuff indiscriminately across the planes.If it was bisected demon bits, would it be a good act?Using the Drift is not inherently an evil action.Okies, but what about when you Drift and now there's bisected angel bits floating around everywhere?
Pretty sure the Devourer ate him. Or maybe is him. It's kind of unclear.
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Drift engine use! Protean approved!
Safe for you and your children!
All banter aside, I think that Drift use is a massive gray area. We see some of the implications in Dead Suns. And I think it will be a major plotpoint for other stories and for filling in the setting with Fluff. Maybe we'll get space druids protesting drift use. Maybe we will get major corps saying drift is 110% safe.
I smell plot points.
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As for doing good, yes you could free a Good outsider who was trapped. You could also free Rovagug.
My new pet theory is that early uses of drift engines freed Rovagug. The gap has something to do with what the gods did in order to stop him.
Aside from the moral issues with the drift engines shaving away pieces of the outer planes, there is another issue. Creatures from those planes are being pulled from their homes and trapped eternally in the drift plane... a place that cannot be escaped with magic. Their only hope of release is that they manage to hitch a ride a passing spaceship which is using a drift engine. This is kind of insane, and the outer planes (of ALL alignments) should launching full scale invasions of the material plane to destroy every drift engine they can to stop this.
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BTW, can anybody explain the de-Evil-ization of UndeathThe Pact Worlds embrace diversity.Apparently.
Doesn't answer the question though.
Yea, in the Pathfinder universe the laws of good and evil don't get changed by democratic vote, lol. Unless someone at least found a way to fundamentally change undeath so that it doesn't turn 99% of those affected by it into bloodthirsty monsters.
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You can randomly kill someone by turning on a car.
When you drive a car, you release low levels of toxins into the air, such as carbon monoxide, particulates and ozone. Each molecule of pollution created this way drifts upon the wind, interacting with a microscopically small fraction of the world.
Each molecule has a tiny chance of being breathed by someone before degrading naturally or bonding with something in the environment to form a stable, nonthreatening compound. Except for...
The small number of molecules that do get inhaled then usually get trapped in a mucus layer. Except for...
The small amount that are not trapped in mucus bind to some part of a cell, of which the majority bind to something not critically important. Except for...
A small amount of those bind to something that cell needed to work correctly, resulting in some sort of cell malfunction. The vast majority of which just kills the cell, of which we have plenty. Except for...
A minority that bind to something that breaks the cell's growth inhibition machinery, which results in a cancer forming. These are usually killed by the host immune system. Except for...
A minority of cancerous cells don't show the correct signs to the immune system to be identified as cancer and are allowed to grow and spread. These will often be caught by a doctor and treated successfully with radiation, chemotherapy or other modern medicines. Except for...
The tumors that spread too far, and don't respond to treatment.
The patient dies from that particle of air pollution. Who released it? No one knows. But someone incompletely burned a molecule of hydrocarbon for transportation, and every unlikely occurrence broke the wrong way to kill someone they've probably never even met.
We do things that might kill someone, somewhere, with really low probability all the time. It is hard to be alive and not do anything that could kill someone. Society generally does not consider it evil to drive a car, because we gain large quality of life benefits from driving that make it worth the small chances of killing people, and we net a benefit as a society by allowing it. The moral implications of the drift drive actually seems like a very good analogy to driving.
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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.
I'm not necessarily saying using the Drift is evil. I don't currently have an opinion.
But this comment above is not factually or logically correct. People don't need to be aware of something's evil or the implications of using something, for it to be evil. Ignorance of the ramifications of doing something does not make doing it ok all of a sudden.
Venture-Agent, Nebraska—Omaha
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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.I'm not necessarily saying using the Drift is evil. I don't currently have an opinion.
But this comment above is not factually or logically correct. People don't need to be aware of something's evil or the implications of using something, for it to be evil. Ignorance of the ramifications of doing something does not make doing it ok all of a sudden.
Ignorance does not absolve sins, but neither is it unimportant.
An evil act is evil either way, but a person is only evil if they could know the consequences of their actions.
That's why there are warnings before alignment infractions in organized play.
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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.I'm not necessarily saying using the Drift is evil. I don't currently have an opinion.
But this comment above is not factually or logically correct. People don't need to be aware of something's evil or the implications of using something, for it to be evil. Ignorance of the ramifications of doing something does not make doing it ok all of a sudden.
Ignorance does not absolve sins, but neither is it unimportant.
An evil act is evil either way, but a person is only evil if they could know the consequences of their actions.
That's why there are warnings before alignment infractions in organized play.
I cannot agree with this at all.
There are warnings for alignment infractions in organized play to alleviate the inconsistency in which different GMs would declare what is and is not an evil act and the propensity for a fair number of GMs to play "I gotchya" with such. The rule in organized play requiring a warning has no bearing on a character being ignorant of the ramifications of their action or not. Its to protect the player from the GM.
An individual does not need to know their actions are evil for them to be evil or for that individual to be evil. Many perpetrations of evil in history have been by those who truly felt they were acting in righteousness and goodness.
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Before this grows out of hand...
Using the Drift is not inherently an evil action. Similar to how a car causes some pollution in the atmosphere of our world, the act of driving a car doesn't make you evil. Obvious statement, but... GMs should never consider applying Infamy for travelling through the Drift.
Also, please stop with the "Undead Alignment" discussions in this thread. It's not the place to talk about it, as it already has several other homes on these boards.
Thanks!
Well, there we go. To answer the title of the thread, regardless of whether it seems evil to you, we now have confirmation that using the drift is in fact, not evil. Fun stuff. Good thread everyone.
No, but then you can kinda see the Quandaries of indirectly and randomly killing stuff indiscriminately across the planes.
Mind your own business, buddy... ;-)