NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="GlyphicEngineer" data-source="post: 9718634" data-attributes="member: 7042623">Ok so. This is a bit difficult to put into words, but what I'm trying to find is published sources of information on how the D&D moral alignments physically interact with the world. Not in terms of ethics- I'm not looking to start a debate on whether a particular action qualifies as good or evil- but rather in terms of how the alignments manifest as substances. Particularly in the setting-neutral shared cosmology of Planescape.For example, there's a recurring theme in D&D that capital-E Evil never truly goes away- if you destroy a demon, the evil that comprises its body is simply reabsorbed by the Abyss and could later reform as some new horror, and the same goes for various other manifestations of Evil-as-substance. This implies that moral substances are conserved quantities that cannot be created or destroyed, only changed to different states. Yet, outsiders are capable of changing their alignments- rising or falling- and even planar layers can slide between planes if their moral charge changes significantly. So does this mean that each moral substance is itself only a specialized state of some unifying substance? And if so, what are the precise laws that govern its changes?As another example, if a person commits enough actions of moral good, evil, law, or chaos, this will change how magic interacts with them, causing certain spells and abilities (detect evil) to produce different results/readings. This implies that morally charged action produces some physical change in a person's soul. So what laws govern how a person's physical actions affect them on a spiritual level?I'm trying to find as many sources as possible to shed light on these sorts of interactions. I don't expect there to be many sources that directly address the metaphysics- although I welcome any that you can share!- but I'm sure that there are many examples of specific moral-physical interactions, which I could study to find the shared laws that underpin them. My hope is to eventually devise a full moral metaphysics for D&D, tying into my preexisting metaphysics of magic.Does anyone have any key sources to share that might shed light on this topic?</blockquote>

Verification