Inflict & Harm spells - Evil??

[Mac Callum]

Let's say two twin brothers are born to a pair of happy parents...

You're confusing evil means with evil ends. Both of the brothers in your story may have good (or lawful) desires and goals, but the act of channeling negative energy itself is the evil part. Your sword analogy is not appropriate because a sword is made of steel, a natural substance. A sword is completely neutral, even more so that trees or squirrels.

Negative Energy is not natural, and it is not Positive Energy (the stuff of life) - it's the stuff of vampires, zombies, etc. Like the spell Create Undead, it's always evil.

I made an exception for Wee Jas though. While truly Evil clerics (like Hextor or Lloth) channel Negative Energy to control undead, but Wee Jas, as the Goddess of Death herself, exerts a special control over undead which is not evil. But that's just a house rule.

 

[jerichothebard]

You are, of course, assuming that Rebuking Undead is inherently an evil act.

no - I am assuming that the act of channeling the energy of unlife - which I think equates VERY WELL to the Dark Side of the Force - is an inherently evil act.


I mainly asked because I have a good cleric as an character, who has a wand of inflict moderate, which he is using more or less as a melee weapon (does waaaaay more damage than mr. fancypants 8 STR would with a sword or flail!) and I was wondering if he should be doing that...

I think I will play him as "ok, but having some ethical quandries to sort out" about it.

He's gotta get a cure mod one, too, to use on undead...

 

[Sejs]

Negative Energy is not natural, and it is not Positive Energy (the stuff of life)

Channeling positive energy is no more a 'natural' act than channeling negative.

If you channel positive energy, you're funneling in life force that is otherwise not supposed to be there. If you get a sword run thru your heart, you're supposed to die. Natural isn't analogous to Good - it's analogous to Neutral. A Solar is in no way natural, it's infact totally and utterly unnatural, but it's about as good as creatures get.

From a purely naturalistic point of view, keeping people alive when they're supposed to die would be just as wrong as killing things that are supposed to live or making things walk that are already dead.