HammerJack wrote: What are you talking about? (Pre-Remaster) Divine Wrath is absolutely alignment damage. Always has been.
It can sicken neutral creatures, but can't damage them.
Sorry, I must've been confusing it with divine decree.
"This spell gains the trait of the alignment you chose. You deal 7d10 damage to creatures in the area; each creature must attempt a Fortitude save. Creatures with an alignment that matches the one you chose are unaffected by the spell."
Damage could be aligned but probably isn't, rules as written. I think that since the spell gains the relevant traits the intent is probably that it deals that type of damage. But it doesn't actually.
Anyway that's off topic, my point is that it was neat that you couldn't use Good damage to kill innocent people.
Calliope5431 wrote: That's fair.
Alignment damage proper (divine lance) didn't, I guess. Which was more what I was thinking of. But you're right that divine wrath is not alignment damage.
To clarify, I guess the change I can see working would have been for the blasts that good PCs had to only hit evil monsters (not unholy, just evil. So your typical greedy murderer gets hit). And evil just hits everything. This would make Good spells "friendly" (in the sense that you can aim them without hurting your party).
And then meanwhile Evil damage would hit everyone, including allies. Just like spirit damage now does. You'd have to make Spirit Blast and Divine Wrath and Divine Decree and all that deal alignment damage then.
It would have been tricky balancing and probably not worth it. But it might have been nice from a lore perspective of "Sarenrae frowns upon the murder of innocent children".
That is somewhat how positive and negative damage works. I always saw the 3.x/PF1 Evil deities using negative energy and Good deities using positive energy as a best tool according to your values thing.
Good deities value healing your allies, even if some enemies are healed too. Whereas Evil deities value hurting your enemies, even if some allies are hurt too.
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Themetricsystem wrote: Positive Energy is the SOURCE of life itself, renaming it Vitality only reinforces the strangeness that life is and at the same time is not itself magical and the souls are both real and normal things as well as infinitely complex raw magical energy.
Life if magic but it's not but it is, every element is another form of raw magic but then again it's not.
It's like there are two kinds of magic, one being the magic of existence and then Magic that is magical because... well, just because.
Material essence magic is magic that deals with the material - matter and conventional energy. That doesn't mean all material is magic or made of magic.
Vital essence magic is magic that deals with life and instinct. Life isn't magic in and of itself, and vital energy isn't any more or less magical than fire is. It's just a lot harder to manipulate without magic.
Souls aren't magic, they're just darn near impossible to interact with outside of using magic. If there were more neutrino-oriented magic, it wouldn't make neutrinos themselves magical.
It might also be helpful to just consider "the magic of existence" a set of metaphysics. Vital energy is produced by creation's forge, flows towards the void, and entangles with living creatures along the way. Magic is just anything that causes things to behave outside the normal rules of physics and the setting's added metaphysics- channeling vital energy the same way someone would channel fire for a fireball.
The Raven Black wrote: Calliope5431 wrote: That's fair.
Alignment damage proper (divine lance) didn't, I guess. Which was more what I was thinking of. But you're right that divine wrath is not alignment damage.
To clarify, I guess the change I can see working would have been for the blasts that good PCs had to only hit evil monsters (not unholy, just evil. So your typical greedy murderer gets hit). And evil just hits everything. This would make Good spells "friendly" (in the sense that you can aim them without hurting your party).
And then meanwhile Evil damage would hit everyone, including allies. Just like spirit damage now does. You'd have to make Spirit Blast and Divine Wrath and Divine Decree and all that deal alignment damage then.
It would have been tricky balancing and probably not worth it. But it might have been nice from a lore perspective of "Sarenrae frowns upon the murder of innocent children".
That is somewhat how positive and negative damage works. I always saw the 3.x/PF1 Evil deities using negative energy and Good deities using positive energy as a best tool according to your values thing.
Good deities value healing your allies, even if some enemies are healed too. Whereas Evil deities value hurting your enemies, even if some allies are hurt too. Mmm, yeah good point. It's sort of odd because positive/negative aren't strictly the same as good/evil. Though that is more just a 3.5 holdover, back when there really wasn't such a thing as good or evil damage
Calliope5431 wrote: The Raven Black wrote: Calliope5431 wrote: That's fair.
Alignment damage proper (divine lance) didn't, I guess. Which was more what I was thinking of. But you're right that divine wrath is not alignment damage.
To clarify, I guess the change I can see working would have been for the blasts that good PCs had to only hit evil monsters (not unholy, just evil. So your typical greedy murderer gets hit). And evil just hits everything. This would make Good spells "friendly" (in the sense that you can aim them without hurting your party).
And then meanwhile Evil damage would hit everyone, including allies. Just like spirit damage now does. You'd have to make Spirit Blast and Divine Wrath and Divine Decree and all that deal alignment damage then.
It would have been tricky balancing and probably not worth it. But it might have been nice from a lore perspective of "Sarenrae frowns upon the murder of innocent children".
That is somewhat how positive and negative damage works. I always saw the 3.x/PF1 Evil deities using negative energy and Good deities using positive energy as a best tool according to your values thing.
Good deities value healing your allies, even if some enemies are healed too. Whereas Evil deities value hurting your enemies, even if some allies are hurt too. Mmm, yeah good point. It's sort of odd because positive/negative aren't strictly the same as good/evil. Though that is more just a 3.5 holdover, back when there really wasn't such a thing as good or evil damage There was, kinda, but it was really clunky and had to be spelled out each time. IIRC it could be handled differently depending on what you were using, too.
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