Forbiddance and Neutral alignment...

[Dark Dragon]

... seems to be a bit vague. Or I am thinking too much about it. From the SRD:

Forbiddance seals an area against all planar travel into or within it. This includes all teleportation spells (such as dimension door and teleport), plane shifting, astral travel, ethereal travel, and all summoning spells. Such effects simply fail automatically.

In addition, it damages entering creatures whose alignments are different from yours. The effect on those attempting to enter the warded area is based on their alignment relative to yours (see below). A creature inside the area when the spell is cast takes no damage unless it exits the area and attempts to reenter, at which time it is affected as normal.

Alignments identical:
No effect. The creature may enter the area freely (although not by planar travel).

Alignments different with respect to either law/chaos or good/evil:
The creature takes 6d6 points of damage. A successful Will save halves the damage, and spell resistance applies.

Alignments different with respect to both law/chaos and good/evil:
The creature takes 12d6 points of damage. A successful Will save halves the damage, and spell resistance applies.

Some food for thought:

Assume Forbiddance was cast by a chaotic evil cleric.

So from the wording one could conclude that those with the Neutral alignment are not harmed. But that would contradict the "Alignments identical" rule...

Or gets a guy with the Neutral alignment the full dose of pain (12d6), because his alignment is different with respect to both law/chaos and good/evil?

So far I tend to interpret the spell in the latter way...

 

[Nagol]

Compared to Chaotic-Evil, Neutral-Neutral has no words in common. A Neutral character differs in both law-chaos (Chaotic vs. Neutral) and good-evil (Evil vs. Neutral).


Seems cut and dried to me.

*edit*

No damage - Chaotic Evil
Partial damage - Neutral Evil, Lawful Evil, Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic Good
Full damage - the rest

 

[SkidAce]

Agree with [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION].

Neutral is different in regards to evil/good.

Neutral is different in regards to law/chaos.

12d6.

 

[the Jester]

Assume Forbiddance was cast by a chaotic evil cleric.

So from the wording one could conclude that those with the Neutral alignment are not harmed.

How so? A true neutral character absolutely differs on both the moral (good-evil) and ethical (law-chaos) alignment axes. I don't see any wording that supports your interpretation here.

Or gets a guy with the Neutral alignment the full dose of pain (12d6), because his alignment is different with respect to both law/chaos and good/evil?

So far I tend to interpret the spell in the latter way...

Correct. If someone's trying to talk you into interpreting it as "neutral takes no damage", I strongly suspect it's a true neutral pc expecting to deal with a forbiddance effect from an evil caster.