D&D General A paladin just joined the group. I'm a necromancer.

[Helldritch]

I don't think you are considering what I am writing.

Feeblemind is not a temporary thing, it is a full destruction of self. The target loses the possibility of communication, they lose their personality, wants, desires. It is all erased under the spell. And with a maximum save result of 15 (rolling a 20-5) If the wizard who cast this spell is of average casting ability, (+3 to stat) it is impossible to recover from without outside intervention.

And, as an 8th level spell, we could point to many many other options that would achieve a goal, without this destruction. Sequester can put a creature into suspended animation to remove them as a threat, it is 7th level.

So, since it matters how you use it, under what Good act could you justify destroying a mind and personality while leaving the body intact to be a less than a beast?

And that doesn't get into Geas, a spell that is quite abusable, since it is essentially magical slavery. For a month the target is magically charmed and must follow your commands or take 5d10 psychic damage (with an average of 27 damage, this means that most targets below level 3 or CR 2 this is obey me or die). Are we going to be of the position that it is morally good to enslave someone under pain of death as long as they are evil?

I really think you are not reading what I write. A tool, magic is a tool. Most spells can be used for good or evil. Only two are purely for evil purpose and both create undead. All the other spells you mentioned have the potential to be used for evil or for good. That is the choice of the caster and for the judgement of the DM while the other two are not opened for debate.

You only mention the cases in which the spells can be used for evil causes to try to prove that your point is valid. But it is not. You purposely ignore the cases where the spells will be used for the greater good so that you are "right" to win an unsustainable position.

So let me give you a few examples
Feeblemind: The evil wizard killed countless people. But no death penalties and the risks of him to escape are great. An enlightened society will condemn him to never cast a spell again. Thus the feeblemind. The vilain will continue forced labour for the rest of his sentence (however long it can be, even life) without fear of him escaping and killing again. A life is preserved with the added bonus that it won't "mind" its incarceration.

Feeblemind can also be used to capture a caster since without spells, a caster is usually not a treath. You can then restore him later for further questioning.

Geas: The evil Gark says he wants to redeem himself. He offers to guide the characters to the lair of his evil former master the Lich Machintrukchouette. But Gark is known to not be true to his words. A geas spell will ensure that he will be faithful to his words. If he truly means to redeem himself, he has nothing to fear.

And voilà! Two Lawfull Good use of your "Evil" spells.

But we have stats for other younglings. Orcs were just one of the examples that everyone was familiar with from my list of 75 sentient evil species.

So, dragons and Neogi are born evil, we have stats for them as hatchlings. So I can ask the same question I asked with orcs with them.

When a Neogi gives birth (lays eggs technically) they are bringing an evil creature into the world. If bringing an evil creature into the world is an evil act, then by this logic, Neogi laying eggs, is an evil act. The same for Chromatic Dragons.

I mean, it must be because of your own assertion "Creating evil things is always evil. No matter your intention." So giving birth is an evil act for these creatures that we have baby stats for.

Again, as I said, and which you keep ignoring, is that we do not have the said stats. If you want to assume something from other stat blocs it is your prerogative as a DM. It can't be debated as you can house rule/homebrew anything since we do not have stat blocs. For the others races to which we do have stat blocs, you state the obvious yourself, giving a strong point for my position and not yours.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I really think you are not reading what I write. A tool, magic is a tool. Most spells can be used for good or evil. Only two are purely for evil purpose and both create undead. All the other spells you mentioned have the potential to be used for evil or for good. That is the choice of the caster and for the judgement of the DM while the other two are not opened for debate.

You only mention the cases in which the spells can be used for evil causes to try to prove that your point is valid. But it is not. You purposely ignore the cases where the spells will be used for the greater good so that you are "right" to win an unsustainable position.

So let me give you a few examples
Feeblemind: The evil wizard killed countless people. But no death penalties and the risks of him to escape are great. An enlightened society will condemn him to never cast a spell again. Thus the feeblemind. The vilain will continue forced labour for the rest of his sentence (however long it can be, even life) without fear of him escaping and killing again. A life is preserved with the added bonus that it won't "mind" its incarceration.

An interesting idea. Except for a few problems.

The biggest is of course, how do you get a creature that cannot communicate in any manner to do forced labor? The spell says the creature cannot understand language or communicate in any intelligible way. So how do you give it a job? Can it understand sign language? Most of the animals I find in the book with Int 1's are things like crabs or frogs. These are not animals you can easily train to do anything, let alone something as complex as breaking rocks with a pickaxe. And what if the creature (because, let us be honest, it is no longer a person after this spell has been cast on it) decides it is tired and doesn't want to work? Do you force it to work?

And your "enlightened" society which consigned this individual to a fate worse than lobotomy (and oh boy, just try and make a moral argument for lobotomizing prisoners out in the real world.) has neglected less powerful magic that will also keep the individual contained. Sequester (if you want to offer them a choice between death or imprisonment), Demiplane, The Imprisonment spell is more powerful, but not by much since we are talking about a society using 8th level magic. Heck, you could just chain them up in an Anti-magic field, removing their magic and not committing murder by proxy by killing their mind. Or use Hallow to create an area of silence and prevent teleportation.

Heck, most spells require material components, removing all items from the wizard's possession nullfies the majority of spellcasting, and setting up an Extraplanar block does the majority of the rest. Like the 4th level Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum.

But, instead your "enlightened society" chose to permanently destroy someone's mind and personality, reducing a man to less than a beast.

Feeblemind can also be used to capture a caster since without spells, a caster is usually not a treath. You can then restore him later for further questioning.

Casting Anti-Magic field would seem to do the same thing, allowing capture, and restraints plus removing casting paraphernalia would make them a non-threat.

So, there is another option that does not include destroying someone's mind.

Geas: The evil Gark says he wants to redeem himself. He offers to guide the characters to the lair of his evil former master the Lich Machintrukchouette. But Gark is known to not be true to his words. A geas spell will ensure that he will be faithful to his words. If he truly means to redeem himself, he has nothing to fear.

Ah, of course, because Zone of Truth isn't a thing to ensure he is telling the truth and we, as the good guys, should always doubt that people who honestly want to be redeemed will follow through on it by psychically ripping at their body if they choose to betray us.

I mean, I guess I could see it as a shock collar, right? That is morally justifiable to put a shock collar around someone's neck and just crank the voltage to maximum when they lie to me. I'm sure the police do this all the time to their criminal informants right? "Sorry buddy, but you are a known liar, I know you say you are going to flip on the mob, but we are going to install this collar around your neck, and if you go back on your word, we are going to fry you like an egg."

Clearly, the most lawful and good actions you could take in that scenario. (Fun fact, the damage from Geas is equivalent to Lightning Bolt, so this would be just like striking them with a live electrical wire)

And voilà! Two Lawfull Good use of your "Evil" spells.

I don't think those words mean what you think they mean friend.

Again, as I said, and which you keep ignoring, is that we do not have the said stats. If you want to assume something from other stat blocs it is your prerogative as a DM. It can't be debated as you can house rule/homebrew anything since we do not have stat blocs. For the others races to which we do have stat blocs, you state the obvious yourself, giving a strong point for my position and not yours.

So your position is that giving birth to an evil creature is an evil act. That was what I was asking.

So, the default of DnD in your mind, includes the idea that if a mother knowingly gives birth to an evil creauture, she has committed an evil act.

The only thing which prevents this from applying more widely, is a lack of statistics for those other races.

 

[Maxperson]

Okay, I think we might be getting somewhere with this.

You acknowledge that being official matters. Whether it is for a rule, a monster, or a class, being official has some weight to it that matters. Perhaps it doesn't change the function, but it does matter.

So, there is a difference between and official setting and a homebrew (designed by an unofficial source) setting.

Sure, but not a functional one. When it comes to setting, the difference is generally support. Official settings get support, your personal one won't. Official matters, but how it matter differs depending on what the official product is.

The reason that we have "Official" "Third-Party" and "Homebrew" is because people care about this distinction.

People care about semantical differences, yes. None of that matters for the point we were making, though. The point we were making is that regardless of whether a setting comes from WotC, myself or you, all three of those settings have deviations from the core rules that only apply to those settings. All three are functionally homebrew. Saying, "But, but! WotC settings are official!" is completely irrelevant to our point.

This has nothing to do with quality or functional differences. This is all about "where does the content come from" Homebrew, as it is normally used, is outside of the corporate angle. It is not designed as a product to be sold.

Incorrect. This is about how they function and literally nothing more. We made the point. You don't get to change the point and then say some irrelevant things are what "It's all about."

 

[Maxperson]

When a Neogi gives birth (lays eggs technically) they are bringing an evil creature into the world. If bringing an evil creature into the world is an evil act, then by this logic, Neogi laying eggs, is an evil act. The same for Chromatic Dragons.

Yep. That sounds about right.

I mean, it must be because of your own assertion "Creating evil things is always evil. No matter your intention." So giving birth is an evil act for these creatures that we have baby stats for.

Absolutely. When good and evil are objective things, creating evil will always be evil no matter what. If you want D&D to be different, you have to change good and evil over from objective to relative.

 

[Helldritch]

@Chaosmancer
I am not going to quote again.
You wanted lawful good use of spells, I gave you three and you decided to turn them into evil, perverting the intent by comparing a temporary solution that can be reversed to a permanent one (lobotomy). Your choice. It seems that you so much want to be the ONE winning your point that you will find evil where there is none and that you will ignore evil where it is really there.

There are ways to avoid and go around a zone of truth. We both know that.

All your solutions requires a lot more money and investment than a simple casting that might not be available at all. Permanent anti-magic zones??? To get rid of them, my solutions only requires either a greater restoration or simple willingness to comply. Ishhh...

As for the orc mothers.. Again your game your rules. But if that is how you want to see it, fine by me nothing in the rules prevents you to decide that.

 

[PrandletheBold]

You're conflating two different things here.

1. The undead are evil, as per the MM. Therefore, creating them and thus bringing evil into the world is an evil act. End of story. (I simply can't grasp how anyone can dispute this)

Question: If (1) the Animate Dead spell creates "non-Evil undead", such as 1e skeletons and zombies which are Neutral; (2) the spell has no negative consequences to the spirit which once inhabited that empty shell, e.g. it still proceeds happily off to the expected afterlife of its chosen faith; and (3) the necromancer is not using the resulting undead for a nasty purpose such as to harm/terrorize/traumatize innocent people but to help achieve a honourable goal -- then, is creating them still an Evil act?

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Question: If (1) the Animate Dead spell creates "non-Evil undead", such as 1e skeletons and zombies which are Neutral; (2) the spell has no negative consequences to the spirit which once inhabited that empty shell, e.g. it still proceeds happily off to the expected afterlife of its chosen faith; and (3) the necromancer is not using the resulting undead for a nasty purpose such as to harm/terrorize/traumatize innocent people but to help achieve a honourable goal -- then, is creating them still an Evil act?

Ultimately it would be the call of the DM who changed the spell.
However personally I'd say no. - Indeed, tweaking the spell (or creating a different spell) like that was one of the earliest suggestions made to resolve the issue.

 

[Lanefan]

Question: If (1) the Animate Dead spell creates "non-Evil undead", such as 1e skeletons and zombies which are Neutral;

In 1e you're quite right, Skeletons and Zombies are neutral; largely because they simply don't have enough brain power to gain an alignment. That said, in 1e higher level casters can get things going that are signficiantly higher on the food chain than Zombies - I'm not sure if it was 3e or 4e that started the idea of limiting it to Zombies at most.

In my game (modified 1e) I still have Animate Dead flagged as an Evil spell, however, because a) the creation of undead is an Evil act overall (just like poison use) and b) because higher-level casters can get things like Ghouls, Wights, and other delights going with the spell and all of those are Evil as ****.

(2) the spell has no negative consequences to the spirit which once inhabited that empty shell, e.g. it still proceeds happily off to the expected afterlife of its chosen faith;

Disagree. Depends how you rule it, I suppose, but anytime I've ever met it the animation of a corpse means that spirit can thenceforth never be revived to normal life, and in some cases it also means the spirit is still somewhat tied to the undead corpse if it's brought up as a Wight or a Wraith or similar.

And there's the whole desecration-of-a-corpse thing, which admittedly matters far more in some cultures than in others.

and (3) the necromancer is not using the resulting undead for a nasty purpose such as to harm/terrorize/traumatize innocent people but to help achieve a honourable goal -- then, is creating them still an Evil act?

Yes due to 1 and 2 above, along with the question of what the undead do after their creator loses control of them (which is almost inevitable at some point unless the creator is also either immortal or undead).

 

[Eric V]

Why is poison use evil?

 

[Lanefan]

Why is poison use evil?

In chivalric circles, poison was defined as a coward's weapon.

In 1e RAW poison use is explicitly noted as evil, which is nice and simple and therefore to my liking. Only Evil Clerics and all Assassins are freely allowed to use it, Paladins and non-Evil Clerics are banned from it, and for all other classes it's left open as - in part - an alignment definer.