What happens to all that positive energy?

[Greg K]

I don't use positive and negative energy in my campaign.

 

[Tonguez]

It balances out all the undead!

I'm not a huge fan of applying science to D&D, however I would say that positive and negative energy is converted to some sort of work when you use it.

I agree and in my homebrew magic system thats exactly what happens - healing spells simply accelerate the natural healing process whereas inflict spells accelarate the natural decay process

so yeah the energy is used to do work and thus transformed

not only that but the minute amount of energy actually needed to heal a person is near insignificant

 

[hong]

Isn't it two 511 keV gamma rays?

Details, details.

 

[kenobi65]

I'm not a huge fan of applying science to D&D, however I would say that positive and negative energy is converted to some sort of work when you use it. For example, when you cast CLW, that positive energy is transferred to the body, to be used to accelerate healing. Natural healing takes energy too... the spell just channels energy to allow it to go faster without using up all the person's resources.

That's what I was gonna say.

 

[jgbrowning]

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

joe b.

 

[VirgilCaine]

...however I would say that positive and negative energy is converted to some sort of work when you use it. For example, when you cast CLW, that positive energy is transferred to the body, to be used to accelerate healing. Natural healing takes energy too... the spell just channels energy to allow it to go faster without using up all the person's resources.

Though, that does give me a cool idea for a healing spell that basically uses the body's energy instead of positive energy for healing, leaving them fatigued and starving. In fact, if I were to give any sort of arcane healing, I think that's how I'd do it.

I mean, duh. You're doing something with the energy, you're not spraying it around like out of a garden hose or something.

 

[GreatLemur]

Since energy can't be destroyed, what happens to it?

Seems like everybody forgets that while energy doesn't exactly disappear, it's always turning into other kinds of energy. A light bulb turns electricity into light, and then that light turns into heat when it strikes opaque surfaces. Just what the hell "positive energy" turns into, though, who knows.

As long as I'm inflicting high school science on fantasy physics, "negative energy" might not even be energy, any more than cold or darkness is. Maybe it's just a severe lack of ambient positive energy in a given area, like a shadow. So when positive and negative energy meet, maybe they just cancel each other out--like a space heater in a meat locker--resulting in a return to normal levels of positive energy in the local environment.

Of course, none of this stuff is as interesting as positive energy sitting around, percolating like radioactivity, seeping into the ground to create weird life the same way an overabundance of negative energy might cause a zombie problem.

 

[Sejs]

For the most part, positive energy in its pure form just doesn't run around free on the material plane. If you cast a cure wounds spell you're channeling positive energy and grounding it out thru a target. The result of which is the target absorbs the energy and is healed; it uses that energy as fuel to restore its body. Sort of takes the natural healing process and kicks it into overdrive. There isn't any energy lost down range as a result.

Even if there were, the matrial plane is a really effective sponge. There's plenty of things that can absorb any ambient positive (or negative for that matter) overflow. Excess positive energy, things are more lush and vibrant, animals and plants are far more fertile, all manner of life propagates greatly, but there's not a whole lot of drawback effect. The natural inflow of negative energy (in the form of things dying) will balance it off in time.

The only instance where you'd have a positive energy problem is in one where you had a massive influx of positive and a severely limited influx of negative. Outflux, if you prefer. That's where you'd start getting into things like cancer, rampant disease, etc.


Heh, or if you want to get really fun, events similar to those in Reaper Man.

 

[Destil]

Note that all magical auras leave a lingering aura for detect magic to pick up. I'd imagine that positive energy is just part of the 'intercosmic background radiation' of the multiverse.

Detect magic shows us that cure light through serious leaves positive energy traces for 1d6 rounds. Cure critical and heal pollute the material plane for 1d6 minutes, anything higher but sub-epic is 1d6x10 minutes.

My first question is this - how do you prepair spells? Perhaps you harness this 'background radiation' energy to power them. That makes the most sense if the law of conservation of energy holds true... though it would limit the number of active spellcasters in a world. There would be a set limit to the potential energy of prepaired spells. The best explination is that you become only more efficent with using this energy as you advance as a spellcaster. Both a novice casting her first healing spell and the 20th level cleric who casts a dozen storms of vengance a day to smite heathan empires spend 1 full hour in prayer. But the 20th level is far better at making efficent use of that energy.

 

[Celebrim]

Knowledge (Arcane): DC 14

Positive Energy is extremely unstable on the prime. It has a very very short 'half-life', and it almost immediately breaks down much like unstable high energy 'strange matter' in our own universe.

Most often, positive energy experiences a process called cascade where seemingly at random quantum of positive energy immediately transform themselves into four atoms of positive quasi-elementals - electricity, radiance, mineral, and mist atoms - through a process called meta-crystallization. What encourages a particular qauntum of positive energy to transform into a particular combination of atoms is not well understood. These atoms proceed to shed energy in the form of motion and secondary energization of the surrounding matter, eventually transforming into air, fire, earth, and water atoms and transforming and recombinging briefly into various paraelementals (and in the presence of negative energy deteriorating further still). This process is very rapid and defies detailed study because the strata which can be used to record the motion of the cascade also appears to influence the meta-crystallization process through a process called 'templating'. In other words, lab experiments which can record the passage of positive energy (typically in glass, ice, or with gemstones) generally have no bearing on what will happen in a different situation. What is known is that in the presence of living tissue the meta-crystallization process appears to be guided by the orderly pathways of the tissue to repair breaks or tears in the tissue, restore missing tissue, and to infuse the tissue with the orderly motion we refer to as 'life'. The template onto which this crystallization occurs is referred to as the 'tree of life' and is the process of much study - and no small amount of reverence by those of a more naturalistic bent.

In addition to speed, one of the big problems with studying positive energy in real world situations is the extremely small scale over which individual atom cascades operate. Examining these cycles requires extremely powerful divination technique to enhance microscopic vision and transformative magic to slow the passage of time. Both of these abilities are far outside the powers of all but the most advanced archmages. This further slows the study in that these figures are often justifiably paranoid about gaurding thier secrets from thier rivals, and often leave only the most obscure and difficult to obtain records of thier experiments.

The ability to control positive energy is the 'holy grail' of arcane magic; it is speculated that improved control of positive and negative energy would allow arcane spellcasters to duplicate the effects of any divine spellcaster. So far research into this area has prove quite difficult, though thus far - through Necromancy - arcane spell casters have had much more success controlling negative energy than positive energy. Some arcane spellcasters, and in fact probably the majority of all Necromancers, believe the good aligned gods are deliberately thwarting research into positive energy control in order to selfishly maintain a monopoly on the power themselves, forcing mortals to worship them. Still, despite this research into positive energy control continues apace in the hopes that somehow some caster will coax the secrets of life from the universe.