Is casting a spell with the Evil descriptor an Evil act?

I'll try and answer with a question:

What's the [Evil] tag telling us?

Hey, Land Outcast, a little off topic here, but how did the situation in your sig pan out? I'm guessing poorly

Aaron L said:

Watch out for that guy at the bar who seems nice buying everyone rounds of drinks! He's an Evil bastard.

The absurdity of poorly thought out rules made for the morally uptight can be astounding.

I can only believe that drug use was declared Evil in the BoVD because of a command from the higher ups so some idiot didn't read the book and decide D&D promotes drug use because it didn't say it was evil.

Us poor smokers. We're all hopelessly Evil. No hope for us at all. Every cigarette is an Evil act. One carton of Lucky Strikes and you're pretty much a Pit Fiend. Might as well give in and go out slaughtering babies.

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What the hell are you talking about?

Sorry for the length...

Well...
last game we were three chars (FR game, an elven wizard who you can't catch without cigars (son of one of the chars in our first campaign, in search for a captured elf to be receptacle of the esscence of a demonic entity called Elf-Eater in FR), a samurai from Kara-Tur gone half-dragon in a quest for honor (Japan-esque land to the east, the half-dragon part is a curse acquired after slaying a pirate captain), and my character, a self-styled fiend hunter with a liking for vodka and a pending "meeting" with his father.

At the current we are trying to help a region (Implitur, former bastion of paladins... curious, we arrived there fortituously, just selected a city to stop by, it was a surprise even for the DM, but the cogs of the world are ever-grinding) conquered by a host of hobgoblins -under command of a death knight and a daemonic sorceress- supported by undead and called fiends.
The fiends were being brought through a gate at a mountain fortress...

-> fastfoward... ->

Inside the fortress we arrived to a hole leading to a gigantic spherical room filled with webbings.
Through the small-ish hole on the ceiling we saw a dozen of said demons. Amazingly, Ryu's (the Samurai) Kiai Shout panicked about half of the creatures (some Lion Clan PrC [from Kara Tur, you know] improves his Kiai Shouts... vastly), who promptly used their planeshifting abilities to spirit away... and suddenly the floor gives off under our feet.

The remaining Beb's had damaged the ceiling (our floor) enough to destroy it, my character and the wizard fall down to the webbings in the chamber and are stuck there for some time... the samurai is left alone to face five demonic spiders...

Thanks to fire resistance, a scorching ray wasn't much of an issue, and allowed me to fall to the floor of the place (damn, it was big!), where I saw a hole on the base of the sphere, from where an unearthly light emanated. The way to the gate was there, for certain. But I hadn't the time to look around, Ryu was alone.
The Cape of the Mountenbak is a mighty useful item.
I fell directly over one of the creatures, sinking my cold iron greatsword (stolen from a member from the Knights of the Chalice I had to terminate... hey, I said fiend hunter, not paladin! the fact my father bound a fiend to my soul *might* have something to do with my objectives...) on its back before falling beside it.

Fastfoward -> hits... potions... poison... ->

Only one demon standing, Ryu was fighting hand to hand with it (both him and I were badly battered, and poisoned). I charge onto its back with an amazing critical hit, almost splitting it in half... no use, still alive... Ryu hits for some damage, more daemonic claws rend our flesh...
I tumble back from the demon (now is when I'm at 4 hp and 1 Con, and the Samurai is at 6 hp)

Without sheathing the greatsword, with shaky hands unstopper the small vodka bottle, swallow it down, and hurl it at the still standing demonic spider while yelling "come and get me!" just to allow the samurai to get the edge (also known as AoO).

When Dilgaard (the wizard) finally managed to disentangle himself, we stepped back for a "powersnack", we teleported back to -not the nearest, the nearest was under the hand of the dead king as wella s several in the region- a city, were we spent enough to recover our health and immediately managed to be teleported back (housrule: a spellcaster Detect Thoughts + Teleport can send you to a locale you know without much risk) so that no more demons sprouted from the gate to guard the place we just "cleaned".

Things didn't finish there, the hole at the bottom of the sphere led to an un-nice place...[offtopic/]

I would rule that casting a spell with the evil descriptor is an evil act, but I can't find any rules on it.

It doesn't normally matter - good clerics can't cast these spells anyway, and good wizards are probably not casting enough evil spells to give cause for concern about an alignment change.

It can cause problems if there is a paladin in the party though.

Particle_Man said:

Well the Book of Vile Darkness says this on [Evil] spells: "Tapping into evil power is an evil act in and of itself, no matter what the effects or the reason for using the power might be."

So using an [evil] spell is an evil act.

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Ditto.

Crothian said:

Summoning the pixie is not evil. But having it do that is evil. On the other hand summoning a demon is evil. Having the demon build the orphage would not be. But that doesn't negate the fact that just summoning up a demon is evil.

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Just what I wanted to say (only better phrased, probably).


glass.

Aaron L said:

Us poor smokers. We're all hopelessly Evil. No hope for us at all. Every cigarette is an Evil act. One carton of Lucky Strikes and you're pretty much a Pit Fiend. Might as well give in and go out slaughtering babies.

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That paragraph just screams for a rules-violating response. Thankfully I mad my Will-save, this time.


glass.

Is it worth looking at this issue from the opposite side.
Is casting a spell with the good descriptor a good act? Does it seem reasonable that a neutral character who frequently casts good spells for the benefit of her allies have their alignment change to good? Would the summoner who keeps on casting magic circle against evil before summoning various neutral creatures become an exalted saint for performing good acts so often?

Simm said:

This seems hypocritical to me. A spell with the good descriptor can easily be used for evil, harming innocents etc., but a spell with the evil descriptor is always evil. It is defiantly easier to commit an evil act with a evil spell than to do it with a good spell but that in no way precludes doing good with an evil spell. It is the intention of the doer that is important.

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Silly...you can kill somone with a fluffy pink bunny pillow, it doesn't make the pillow evil, just the act. Now, if you had the death bunny pillow, with the poison, and disease, and the rusty nails sticking out all over...that pillow is evil, because you can't do anything 'good' with it.