Just _what_ is Negative Energy, precisely?

[I'm A Banana]

Naah, the way I figger, Undead are immune to mind-affecting effects becasue those work on neurons and chemicals -- the undead ain't got those. They can't get their blood boiling, 'cuz they ain't got blood.

Undead are created IMC by the corruption of a soul -- the soul being the manifestation of Positive Energy, of Life. This is why creating undead is Evil, but creating a Bone Golem is not.

Your mind is attatched to your soul, because a soul is required to generate a mind; a mind is basically a soul's defense mechanism, how it detects threats against it and moves to protect itself. The Body, then, is the mind's defense mechanism, how the mind influences the physical world.

When you die, your body fails, and your mind is vulnerable to the inherent energies of reality -- it is shunted off the plane, to the afterlife, with your soul, which then manufactures a new body (thus making resurrection impossible -- your body is your mind and soul). The process on your plane of death is a process of melding your mind with the plane; the plane is, in essence, all these similar minds that ever existed. The soul, then, devoid of body (material) and mind (outer), travels through the Far Realm, back to Positive Energy, where it births another physical mind and body. Which is why the Far Realm creatures are so maddening -- they don't follow the mind, because they are independant of it; they are pure soul, given body without mind.

 

[LoneWolf23]

The way I see Negative Energy is as Anti-Life, or the Destructive energy of Entropy. Essentially, Negative Energy seeks to break down all things to nothingness, which is why you can find Voidstones there.

Now, the reason why Undead are empowered by Negative Energy is because they essentially serve as walking, killing agents of Entropy: willful undead seldom do more then kill living creatures, while necromancers summon undead for few other reasons then using them to kill others.

Now, this doesn't mean that Negative Energy is Evil or malicious.. It's just Energy, doing what it does: breaking down things. Just like Fire's purpose is to burn things, Negative Energy's purpose is to foster decay in all things until they break down into oblivion.

 

[dcollins]

That's because those authors are dumb and wrong, heh.

Negative Energy is evil in the same way that Fire is evil. Which is to say that it isn't.

But it is Detremental. And Detremental things are Bad. And Bad things are Evil.

Feh. Sloppy-arse cracker-jack logic is what labeled negative energy as evil.

It's not "sloppy", that's how the energy planes were originally defined by Gygax (see 1st Ed. PHB p. 120). Anything else is at best revisionist.

 

[Sejs]

It's not "sloppy", that's how the energy planes were originally defined by Gygax (see 1st Ed. PHB p. 120). Anything else is at best revisionist.

Actually, no it just means that Gygax was using the same crap logic (detremental = bad = evil). I mean the man gets loads of credit for fathering our hobby, but it's not like he's infallible.

And besides, just because it's old doesn't automatically mean that it's better.

 

[Incenjucar]

Gygax tends to have a rather polaric view of things, possibly because of his philosophical background, and/or the time he was raised in. Back then, it was also much more acceptable for every fricking fantasy race to be utterly racists. Now, not so much. The modern era is more comfortable with gray areas, and, for that, I'm glad. Heck, there's even novels (bad novels, but still) that have 'black magic' being the usually-good or at least society-positive, orderly magic, for once.

 

[dead]

Geez, Gez, you really have got me thinking!

What's up with dat Shadow Plane?

Is this a mix of PE and NE? If so, then why is the Shadow Plane so special; ie. you can reach other cosmologies via the Shadow Plane but not via the PE or NE planes?

In 1E and 2E the Shadow Plane used to be a demi-plane (like Ravenloft). In 3E, it is a fully fledged plane. I think this was a good move, but does it have any relationship to PE and NE?

 

[clark411]

To quote my barbarian...



"BAD PUDDING! ... BAD!"

 

[Horoku]

I always figure that the level drain is caused by imbalance. A level-draining undead creature has a massive amount of negative energy; waaay more than there is positive energy in a natural life-form. So, because opposites attract, a life-form's positive energy is sucked into and overpowered by the undead's negative energy.

But yeah... that being said, I consider negative energy to be its own coherent force. Yeah, the NE plane appears empty, but it sucks out your life force. The Vacuum plane looks and feels almost exactly like the NE plane, but it doesn't do that; it just suffocates you. Therefore, NE is just as dynamic a force as PE, rather than simply an absence thereof. That's how I play it, at any rate.