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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Pendragon" data-source="post: 1654043" data-attributes="member: 707">I don't seem to recall saying that the impact was greater with [evil] spells.  If I conveyed that impression, I'm sorry.  That's not how I meant to describe it.  In either case, using a spell of an opposing alignment will have a slight affect on the caster's own alignment.  Neither will instantly nullify the many other choices a PC makes/has made regarding right and wrong.  But they do add their small weight to that scale.This is not how I run it.  I apologize if I gave that impression.  When I said that a wizard could not be truly good by consistantly using [evil] spells, I meant a wizard who makes regular and strong use of such spells over their [good] alternatives.  Of course a few here and there will mean little.  No PC is required to act in accordance with his alignment in every decision he makes.  But on the whole, if he's acting closer to another alignment, his own alignment will change to match.  And constantly preferring to summon fiendish creatures over celestial ones, for instance, is a part of that.On a side note, though, I wouldn't have a problem with the scenario you mention.  Traditionally, it's always been considered harder to remain pure than to slide into evil, harder to redeem oneself from evil than to fall from grace.  So I could easily accept a campaign paradigm in which using [evil] spells was weighted more significantly than [good] spells.I don't know "why eyebite."  It wasn't [evil] in 3.0, and I'm not sure why the designers felt a need to change it.  I suppose because it's the closest thing 3.x has to giving someone "the evil eye" and they thought that should be an evil effect.Looking over the spells that you single out, it seems that all of them are strongly tied to pain, torture, and disease.  All of which strike me as evil.Symbol of Pain:  "...each creature within the radius of a symbol of pain instead suffers wracking pains..."Contagion:  "The subject contracts a disease selected from the table below, which strikes immediately (no incubation period)."Eyebite:  "Sudden pain and fever sweeps over the subject’s body."Nightmare:  "You send a hideous and unsettling phantasmal vision to a specific creature"This all seems very evil.  Now, while Feeblemind and Blindness/Deafness are certainly as mechanically debilitating, they are not nearly so evil in nature.I disagree.  There's a difference between sending someone a hideous phantasmal vision in their sleep and literally frightening them to death, and just incinerating them in an instant.  One is torture, the other is just killing.  Same with Symbol of Pain vs. something like, say, Power Word: Stun.  Sure, at the end of the battle your opponent may wind up dead in either case, but with one spell your foe is incapacitated with "wracking pains" and with the other they're just held immobile.  There is a significant difference here.  The means, not the ends, are the reason the [evil] tag is being applied.I have to agree with you on Deathwatch.  It's shiny new 3.5 [evil] tag seems misplaced.  I suppose they may have merely wanted to make a flavor differentiation between good and evil clerics: forcing good ones to use Status while evil ones can feel more evil by using the now [evil] Deathwatch.  *shrug*  It doesn't bother me overly for the spell to be [evil] since Status is just as good, though I could see a DM removing the [evil] tag and have no problem with it.Interesting.  I think the designers made a mistake using this clause in the Planar Binding spells.  As you point out, the compulsion effect of Planar Binding changes the tone of the spell dramatically over, say, Planar Ally.  My guess is that the designers just didn't consider the drastic difference in approach between Planar Binding and Planar Ally, which also contains the same clause.You've done nothing of the sort.  The examples you gave only further illustrate the reason why spells are tagged [good] or [evil].  The lone exception is Planar Ally, which goes further to prove the designers weren't paying attention to that particular spell, than that [good] and [evil] spells weren't meant to have any bearing on alignment.In regards to the discussion of paladins you commented:Weakening a creature through magic is the same level as using poison?  Oi vey.  We could get into another discussion on that alone, I think.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> I agree, I think we should leave paladins out of the discussion.  It would only muddy the waters. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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