What happens to all that positive energy?

[Pyrex]

That could be an interesting basis for an alternate magic system.

Sort of a magic-of-recluse-ish balance of power where any positive energy based spell that is cast creates an energy debt which makes casting negative energy based spells easier.

Get too many clerics casting Cure spells and you've got an etheric abundance of negative energy floating around just waiting for a necromancer to use it up and even the score.

You could even apply the same concept across multiple opposing energy types; perhaps even allowing for planar traits to intrude in areas of huge imbalance.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Deathless.

(ducks and runs away from the deathless-hatas!)

 

[Wilphe]

Joins the "please stop trying to apply real world pyhsics to D&D" crowd.

The only real world science that fits is Ancient Greek and Medieval Scholastic science, which does at least have the Four Elements. Anything post-Newton (or post-Renaissance for that that matter) is going to be anacrhonistic.

 

[Corsair]

I actually had a spontaneous lecture on this exact topic in character a couple sessions ago!

My character is a Wizard / Loremaster / Archmage looking for alternatives besides lichdom for eternal life. When she first broached the topic with the party paladin, she explained that the real reason that people view powerful undead as a threat is because creating excessive amounts of them increase the total amount of negative energy in existence.

Negative energy is in essence concentrated entropy. Positive energy is the concentrated building blocks of life. In a "pure" world, these forces are essentially in balance. In standard prime however, there are concentrations of both forces in the form of undead and evil clerics, as well as an abundance of good clerics and paladins (and rangers and druids) casting healing spells.

The reason that animals and people instinctively react poorly to negative energy and consider it "evil" or "unnatural" is that it is very possible for powerful sources of negative energy to unbalance the ship. The material plane is like a ship floating through the sea of the shadow plane under a sky of astral. If the ship is over balanced in either direction, you risk capsizing.

(This was all her explanation as to why Lichdom is bad. Not because it was evil, but it was evil because it posed the possibility of unbalancing all existence and possibly sending the entire plane spiraling into the abyss. That's the only reason my wizard didn't want to become a lich.)

 

[ender_wiggin]

Energy can't just "flow through the material plane and go back to its respective Plane of energy." If that was true, the other planes would get really hot really fast. To do work, positive and negative energy must be converted to something tangible.

Whenever energy does work, it is converted to another form. Eventually, it turns to heat. Cast too much magic, you get global warming.

Or maybe there are "buffer" or "exhaust" planes that absorb heat (the leftover energy from other "intake" planes).

It's easier to come up with this if you know the basics.

Start Here

Even though I apply real physics concepts to my games/homebrew, I agree that it's really a matter of taste.

 

[GreatLemur]

The reason that animals and people instinctively react poorly to negative energy and consider it "evil" or "unnatural" is that it is very possible for powerful sources of negative energy to unbalance the ship. The material plane is like a ship floating through the sea of the shadow plane under a sky of astral. If the ship is over balanced in either direction, you risk capsizing.

Good points, here. If I recall--and maybe this is just earlier editions--it's been stated explicitly in the rules that negative energy is not inherently "evil", and positive energy is not inherently "good". Exposure to too much positive will kill a prime material inhabitant just as fast as negative will. So actually, it could be that--in the long run--dragging too much positive energy to the prime material plane would be just as dangerous as an equal amount of negative energy. Mortal creatures just like positive better because their kind of lifeforce happens to be based on it (or something like that), so it's healthy for them in small doses.

I dig the idea of excess positive energy leading to some kind of Colour Out of Space situation, where the local vegetation and wildlife in an area gradually grows strong and strange and oddly-colored, then bloated and sickly and stranger still, before withering and dying as the energy overcomes them. The most benevolent practices of good religions could actually have polluting side effects, similar to so many useful and "good" things in our own world.

 

[Celebrim]

Energy can't just "flow through the material plane and go back to its respective Plane of energy."

No, it can't, but not for the reason you suggest.

If that was true, the other planes would get really hot really fast.

The plane of fire is really hot. All the time. It never however gets hotter, because being infinite in size, any finite amount of fire you added to it would make no difference on the whole. The plane of radiance is really hot. All of the time. The plane of Positive Elemental Energy is a different kind of 'really hot' all the time. There is an infinite amount of energy on the positive elemental plane. On the negative elemental plane, there is an infinite amount of anti-energy.

To do work, positive and negative energy must be converted to something tangible.

Yes, by the definition of work something has to happen.

Whenever energy does work, it is converted to another form.

That follows from the above.

Eventually, it turns to heat.

Whoa there. Hold your horses. This is a universe in which 'heat' is an elemental concept. Things get hot because fire atoms are added to their molecular structure. In such a universe, it is not a universal truth that energy is always turned into 'heat'. It happens alot (otherwise there would be no versimilitude), but energy can also turn into water, or stone, or air. Heat is not the end state of such a universe.

Cast too much magic, you get global warming.

Or possibly too much water. Ever thought about the effects of 'Eversmoking Bottles' and decanters that release an infinite amount of water? What about the effects of disentegrate? What happens when a being from the elemental plane of air opens up a gate and starts mining the prime for raw material for his palace?

Or maybe there are "buffer" or "exhaust" planes that absorb heat (the leftover energy from other "intake" planes).

Yes. The negative elemental plane 'sucks' energy from the other planes continually. These planes become less positive as a result. At the same time, the positive elemental plane is pouring energy into the planes, with a net result of making them more energetic. The stronger that the negative elemental plane 'sucks', the more positive energy flows out of the positive elemental plane. Conversely, the more positive elemental energy that accumulates, the stronger the elemental 'voltage' across the plane and the harder that the negative elemental plane sucks.

Even though I apply real physics concepts to my games/homebrew, I agree that it's really a matter of taste.

I think you'll find that real world physics falls apart in the face of game concepts like infinite spaces, infinite distances, perpetual motion, four basic elements, heat as a substance not an energy, multiple diminsionalities in continual interface, 'gate' spells, and so forth.

 

[GreatLemur]

I think you'll find that real world physics falls apart in the face of game concepts like infinite spaces, infinite distances, perpetual motion, four basic elements, heat as a substance not an energy, multiple diminsionalities in continual interface, 'gate' spells, and so forth.

Welllll, just how much of D&D's explicit and implied weirdness you have to accept is pretty optional. I think it's pretty fair and reasonable to say that things like normal thermodynamics and such hold true until magic or extraplanar influences intervene. Magic pretty much has to be a separate system from natural law, or else things like anti-magic fields would do quite a lot more than suppressing spellcasters.

I don't think we have to go so far as to say that because D&D defines fire as an "element", we have to accept a world where there are such things as "fire atoms". Fire is still a chemical reaction. It's just that it's also something with a distinct and fundamental identity in magical systems and planar cosmology. "Elemental" fire might even be somewhat different from natural (or prime material) fire, an idea which I believe has some precedent in classical alchemy.

Similarly, when the PHB calls acid a type of "energy", all they're really saying is that chemical burns are a damage type specifically covered by the game's rules something different from regular physical damage. We don't have to look at their choice of terminology and infer that acid is part of some fantasy electromagnetic spectrum.

 

[Agamon]

Were one able to stop all the healing in the world, one would kill all the undead....

Hey...that's a great campaign plot, Joe....

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

It can't be destroyed, but it can be transferred/transformed, correct? I'm a far cry from a physicist, but that's my understanding anyway

- e.g., positive energy used to heal a person powers the natural regenerative processes of the body (like consuming food, only much faster)
- the power of negative energy used to create a vampire does is akin to shocking someone with a defibrillator.

When you eat a sandwich and go for a run a few hours later, you don't find massive pockets of kinetic energy hanging out, do you? When someone is in cardiac arrest and gets defibbed, there's not residual electric energy floating around in the air, right?

Or maybe there is. I really don't know.