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2019-02-16, 11:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
What D&D is trying to do is a "why is the default setting like that?" question. What I've been debating for more than 20 pages now is and has always been "what is the default setting and is it coherent?".
Yes, there is a meta reason, even several, for why devils and undead are bad guys. I recognize and understand at 100% the fact that the D&D designers decided so, for those reasons.
Does the in-setting justification for them being the bad guys hold, though? I think it does. 5e has done a great job correcting or removing many of the inconsistencies and incoherent elements of previous editions (like how 3.X zombies where utterly evil despite being devoided of mind). It's not perfect, obviously, for the most part it's a consistent setting which respects logic.
It doesn't bother me that people don't like the 5e lore. It's more than fair. It doesn't bother me that people change stuff for their settings. I do it, everyone does it.
What bother me is that people keep affirming things that are not accurate of 5e's default setting, while saying it is accurate for 5e, and that people claims there are inconsistencies or incoherent elements in places where there is none (again, if people claim there is something inconsistent where there is, then it's not a problem to me, for obvious reasons).
And among the people who do that, I've noticed that a lot of them were using the 3.X lore, especially concerning the alignment system.
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2019-02-16, 12:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
Such a "moral" system can exist in the setting, sure, with its cosmic forces and its assertions.
Just means that unfairness, injustice, and wrongness are built into that setting's cosmic structure. Forget gods not being above right and wrong... universes and realities aren't above right and wrong. There are reasons underlying right and wrong, and those reasons don't stop being reasons just because it's another "reality". I'm not going to further tank the thread by listing off specific ugly and inflammatory immoral acts, but those acts don't suddenly become moral just because it's in another universe.
Is the question in this thread the stated "Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?"... or is it actually "Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not, in the default/implied D&D setting?"
If it's the former, I've given my answer a few times. If it's the later, I don't have an answer, because it's a meaningless distinction. Either way, maybe I should just try to walk away.It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2019-02-16, 12:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
Which is a bit of a head scratcher.
IIRC, necromancy spells fall into three categories:
- Those that deal necrotic damage.
- Those that bring creatures to undeath.
- Those that bring creatures back to life.
The last two make sense to me.
So does the first, until you consider that a spell like cure wounds is indeed listed not as necromancy, but evocation. I assume that is to be understood as the evocation of positive energy. But if the school of necromancy is concerned with the forces of life and death, why is the evocation of negative energy considered necromancy while the evocation of positive energy is considered evocation?
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2019-02-16, 12:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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2019-02-16, 12:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
Two of those produce a setting in which mortals in the setting (and the game playing at the table) should firmly ignore the Alignment system entirely. In the first, a moral system that's incomprehensible even utterly counter-intuitive in some cases, resulting in mortals not being able to discern Good and Evil, is useless, and as you state they should just proceed with trying to do the right thing as best they can... because they have no way of avoiding doing "Evil" by simple innocent accident. In the second... if Good and Evil have no impact, then just go do the right thing and forget Good and Evil.
The last is the sort of cloud-cookoo-land nonsense (the book's claim, not your paragraph) that awaits at the bottom of the rabbit hole of Alignment as Cosmic Forces.Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2019-02-16 at 12:11 PM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2019-02-16, 12:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
The fantasy isn’t just that an objective, observable, measurable system of morality exists in the Great Wheel... it is also part of that fantasy that the system is actually, truthfully, and correctly fair and just; correctly calibrated to ethical absolutes of right and wrong. If you are seeing injustice and immorality in the framework, then you are not truely embracing the setting priors.
That is just as much fantasy, arguably, giant flying firebreathing lizards and that looking at big squid monsters can break your mind... but we can’t just waive away the parts of the fantasy we don’t like or can’t wrap their mind around conceptually
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2019-02-16, 12:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
Or rather, I'm not engaged in the circular reasoning that it's right because the system says it's right and the system is right because it says the right things are right. I'm stepping to the side and examining the thing for what it is, not what it claims to be. I'm going to judge the setting for what it is, not what it wants to be, and if I'm seeing injustice and immorality in the framework of the universe depicted in that setting, it's because those things are there.
Tell me that the cultures / societies in a setting have different moral/ethical standards, and I can work with that. Plenty of past and even current cultures / societies in the real world have different or even flat wrong standards.
Assert that in the "universe" of a setting, there are different moral standards baked right into the cosmic fabric, and I'm going to start looking for the inevitable cases where those standards fail, and with certain assertions start wondering what sort of abhorrent wrongness the author is trying to justify as "good" because "the universe says so".
Insert the most horrible thing you can think of one person doing to another person -- if "the cosmic forces" say that act is "Good", does that make it right for one character in that setting to do to another character?
I'd say that such a system is more fantastical than dragons or Krakens or magic spells.Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2019-02-16 at 12:36 PM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2019-02-16, 12:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
There is AT NO POINT in 5e where the reasoning is "it's bad because the setting says it's bad".
When the setting says it's bad/good/whatever, it has an explanation of it.
Assertions like "D&D has stuff that is arbitrarily evil/good/whatever" are wrong, as far as 5e is concerned. It has arbitrary definitions for the alignments, true, but it's not "this is Good, because we decide what is good", it's "this particular kind of benevolent behaviors is called neutral good", when the behavior can logically be qualified as benevolent both in- and out-of-universe.Last edited by Unoriginal; 2019-02-16 at 12:42 PM.
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2019-02-16, 12:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
As a note, there's a huge difference between these two ideas:
1) We can know what the rules are, but we don't/can't know why they're the rules or we may not agree with the (limited amount of) explanation we can understand.
2) We cannot know what the rules are.
The first is the truth for the real world. We can know (some) scientific and moral rules, but there is no guarantee that we can understand why. To say otherwise is pure hubris. It is also true for the "mortals can't comprehend the reasons behind why Good and Evil are they way they are" explanation of D&D morality. The second is just not true of either.Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
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2019-02-16, 12:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
In many fantasy settings, looking at things like cosmic horrors that man cannot comprehend drive a person insane. As a student of cognitive neuroscience I find the concept ridiculous, there isn’t a neuro-architectural apparatus for sensory information of any kind to do that kind of thing, mental health (including psychosis and delusions of the type usually portrayed in cosmic horror fiction) is more complex than that, and frankly the mind is pretty good about processing illogical and incomprehensible input in less maladaptive ways than ‘take 3d6 psychic damage and save for stun’.
And yet, I’ve played in and enjoyed Call of Cthulhu Style games, enjoyed literature of that genre, even with the underlying premise being absurd. Swollowing the moral objections to the implications of absolute, supernatural, but also still right and correct ethical system into one of many suspensions of disbelief is part of setting building like this
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2019-02-16, 12:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
Huh, no. Those only violates the laws of physics as we know them. Physics being different in a different universe is a given.
Morality being somehow unexplainable or directly tied to some sort of cosmic energy violates the laws of logic. Because while it is determined based on the physical world, morality itself is entirely astract, with our understanding of it limited mostly by insight and language, not some arbitrary absurdity like "you must be from one of those planes of existence to understand those concepts", or worse, "this energy type is inherently [im]moral regardless of what it's used for".Yes, I am slightly egomaniac. Why didn't you ask?
Free haiku !
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Originally Posted by Fyraltari
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2019-02-16, 01:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
Can a toddler understand quantum chromodynamics? Does that make it less true (ish)? More arbitrary?
Mortals in D&D are, from a moral capability perspective, toddlers. The moral rules we have are only the surface phenomena. There is deeper order that we simply cannot see.
More aptly, if they violate the laws of logic, it is because our premises are wrong/incomplete. Reasoning from inapt axioms produces contradiction where there is none.Last edited by PhoenixPhyre; 2019-02-16 at 01:05 PM.
Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
Rogue Equivalent Damage calculator, now prettier and more configurable!
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2019-02-16, 01:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
In the Great Wheel fantasy model, morality is as ‘physical’ a process as time and gravity... just one of entirely abstract things that are concretely manifest along with law and chaos, mathematical truths, life and death itself, thought... That you see that absurd in practice is fine, but that you categorically reject even the premise sort of defeats the purpose of embracing a fantastical setting...
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2019-02-16, 01:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
This comes across as another case of intentional vagueness (in 5e, not by you), of trying to eat their cake and have it too. Alignment is descriptive... until it's not. Alignment is cosmic forces of objective morality... until it's not. PC alighment is "these actions are typically...", but then there are also planes, places, energies, and entities that are objective inherently Good, Evil, Lawful, Chaotic, etc.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2019-02-16, 01:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2019-02-16, 01:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
If it's about perceiving morality directly, that's bullcrap, because morality is evaluated and not perceived. Then it's a mere problem of insight. And what exactly stops mortal for acquiring that insight?
More aptly, if they violate the laws of logic, it is because our premises are wrong/incomplete. Reasoning from inapt axioms produces contradiction where there is none.
No, that means I'm capable of processing those things as no longer matching what morality actualy is and refusing to pretend the word has a different meaning.
Fantasy is about exploring ideas, not masquerading them behind different words.Yes, I am slightly egomaniac. Why didn't you ask?
Free haiku !
Alas, poor Cookie
The world needs more platypi
I wish you could be
Originally Posted by Fyraltari
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2019-02-16, 01:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
That's mostly due to an incomprehension of Lovecraft's work from the people making that kind of stories and games, despite taking enough cue from it for pop culture recognition, compounded by the fact the psycho-neuroscientific knowledge of his time was quite limited or wrong compared to the one we have access, the cultural differences of he time period, and Lovecraft's own issues.
The Lovecraftian characters didn't go mad because they couldn't understand the true form of the squid-man-dragon or the like. They were just scared ****less out of their mind by the weird things they encountered, and SOME developed what nowadays we would call PTSD as a result. Most of the characters didn't have more mental issues after encountering the supernatural than before, and of those who experienced issues, they generally recovered fully after a brief period of calm. Adding to that, many encountered things that were hard to describe because it was either counter to the usual perception of the world, or because they were too scared to think clearly.
But time, imitation, and Lovecraft's deliberately unclear way of writing have eroded the concept in pop culture, and now "roll for SAN loss" has become a trope on its own.
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2019-02-16, 01:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
I think that while the Inner Planes are alternate physics in action, the Outer Planes are meant to be abstract. For example, Mount Celestia doesn't just serve as an allegory for elevating oneself to higher and higher virtues, but it is that concept made manifest.
And now I see the energy planes being in neither group as a pickle.
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2019-02-16, 01:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
Regardless of its origins (I agree the idea was not hard pressed in Lovecraft’s own work); it is part of most Cosmic Horror RPGs (including the parts of DnD that emulate it) that despite being absurd I can embrace for the sake of the setting and enjoyment of the game within that setting.
Just like I can embrace an embodiment of Law itself, in its absolute and true manifest form, that is in fact Law incarnate and I’m not going to quibble about how as an abstract concept that doesn’t make sense to me really... is also a monster in some clockwork part of a dungeon and 50/50 I’m going to have to kill it
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2019-02-16, 01:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
I had to skip two pages to get somewhat caught up but has anyone discussed the alignment of undead in relation to the balance of power in the outer planes?
Good deities usually have a strong anti-undead stance and spend lots of effort combating them. Most deities who have a portfolio including undead are evil (many neutral death gods are against undead as a form of messing with their domain as well).
From a metaphysical standpoint creating undead is putting another stone on an evil god's side of the scale and giving them that little bit more power and influence. It isn't much but in the sense that a single vote in a nationwide election isn't much, if enough people do it there is a huge change to the relative power of the gods and aligned positions.
This makes me wonder if ocean deities might encourage flooding to expand their domain or be against it to preserve the existing health of their waters.
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2019-02-16, 01:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
Assertion, not fact.
No, wrong premises merely bring wrong conclusions without touching the laws. They violate the laws of logic (specificaly, the law of identity that we use to associate a word with an idea) because they're forcing something completely divorced from morality under the same word and pretending it's okay.
No, that means I'm capable of processing those things as no longer matching what morality actualy is and refusing to pretend the word has a different meaning.
Fantasy is about exploring ideas, not masquerading them behind different words.
Our own reality is just as subject or more to such complaints. In fact, there have been thousands (millions?) of man years spent arguing over what morality means. Expecting a group of writers to do better (especially when that's only a tiny fraction of their work) is blind at best.Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
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2019-02-16, 01:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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2019-02-16, 01:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
Especially when that's obviously untrue. Even in moral terms, because we haven't solved those problems for our universe over many life-times of trying.
And most mentally competent adults can't even grasp introductory QED, let alone QCD. Heck, even most professional physicists have trouble with that and don't necessarily believe it.Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
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2019-02-16, 01:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
My beef with alignment is that it puts the DM in a position of (fictional) supreme moral authority.
Sometimes, it is easy. Your good-aligned character burned an orphanage for fun? You are not pulling that holy sword from the stone.
But what if the DM holds strong convictions on sensible subjects? Of the kind I can't even mention on this forum? You have your character do what you consider the right thing and bam! Angels look at you with contempt.
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2019-02-16, 01:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
I'll admit. I feel similarly contemptuous of alignment for different reasons--I hate the "creatures have fixed (or nearly so) alignments" thing. It's so limiting. So I've abolished it for my setting.
But the standard system, in 5e's version anyway, doesn't really have that much weight. Unless something becomes your habitual way of path of action, you can act "off-alignment" without reprecussions--alignment (for PCs anyway) is purely descriptive.Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
Rogue Equivalent Damage calculator, now prettier and more configurable!
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2019-02-16, 02:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
No.
There is Good in the universe, good outsiders UNDERSTAND it better than humans, so they know better what is good and what is not good. Mortals lack that perspective so sometimes is dificult for then to comprehend why their actions are evil and what consequences they have in the great scheme of things.
Its not how they see it, it IS. What changes is the grasp that certain groups have of it. The definitions, be by humans or outsiders are the conclusion they end up after tryng to understand what is Good. The diference is that outsiders are closer to the Truth
They do have detectable consequences. There are all the kinds of efects linked to the influence of Good and Evil through the Prime material, expontaneou undead being one of then.
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2019-02-16, 02:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
5e alignment is ALWAYS descriptive.
Those things are not arbitrarily "objectively inherently Good, Evil, Lawful, Chaotic, etc". They inherently have the traits that fits the description of a given alignment, because they are created by those traits.
See Gehenna :
Gehenna is the plane of suspicion and greed. It is the birthplace of the yugoloths, which dwell here in great numbers. A volcanic mountain dominates each of the four layers of Gehenna, and lesser volcanic earth bergs drift in the air and smash into the greater mountains. The rocky slopes of the plane make movement here difficult and dangerous. The ground inclines at least 45 degrees almost everywhere. In places, steep cliffs and deep canyons present more challenging obstacles. Hazards include volcanic fissures that vent noxious fumes or searing flames. Gehenna has no room for mercy or compassion. The fiends living here are among the greediest and most selfish in all the multiverse.
OPTIONAL RULE: CRUEL HINDRANCE The plane's cruel nature makes it difficult for visitors to help one another. Whenever a visitor casts a spell with a beneficial effect, including a spell that restores hit points or removes a condition, the caster must first make a DC 10 Charisma saving throw. On a failed save, the spell fails, the spell slot is expended, and the action is wasted
If someone removed greed and suspicion from the souls and minds of all who exist, Gehenna would disappear, because it would have nothing to be the representation of.
Similarly, devils are created from the souls of people whose behavior could be described as "methodically tak[ing] what they want, within the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty, or order." The souls have any trace of personality and memory erased, except for a faint remains of in which way they did those things, and the new being is basically nothing but tendencies to take what they want within the limits of the code, until it develops new experiences and intellect which will grant it a new personality and memories. If it REALLY wanted, a devil could stop behaving that way. But most don't, because they enjoy taking what they want within the limits of the code and being themselves, and a devil that stops behaving that ways stops being a devil. Quite literally, it's the way they act that makes them be incarnations of lawful evilness.
There is no instance in 5e of "they are X alignment" without "they do X things that fit the description of the alignment".
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2019-02-16, 02:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
I get that feeling. For example, MToF made me enjoy duergar lore. They are the descendants of dwarves who went through a traumatic experience with the illithids. Enslaved, experimented on, eaten, all that fun stuff. They lost their faith in Moradin and their love for metalworking as an art, now concerning themselves only with drab survival. And for that, they were rejected by other dwarves. Do they have the potential to be great villains, thinking themselves entitled to every act of vengeance? You bet! Should duergar be always or predominantly evil? That does seem so very limiting.
On the other hand, were you to tell me that fiends aren't, in fact, evil incarnate, and that maybe celestials are the real villains here... I would think that's a different kind of limitation. Your setting doesn't actually have room for fiends and celestials, just very different creatures masquerading as those.
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2019-02-16, 02:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
So basically morality in D&D is all about accepting that you are too stupid to think for yourself and that good people need to just shut up and do as their told?
Yeah, That is SO much better.
Being infantilized is almost the exact opposite of what I play D&D for. Honestly at that point I would rather just play FATAL, because atleast that game pretends that its players are mature adults.Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2019-02-16, 03:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?
Duergars are predominantly evil because they live and are perpetuating an oppressive society/culture that make them act like harmful ****s to both non-duergars AND other duergars, due to what is rewarded and what is punished. It's possible for them to not do it, but it'd require changing their ways of living drastically, and most don't see the point.
In my Waterdeep campaign, I'm going to introduce a duergar opera singer, and who's incredibly good at it. She was raised basically all her life in Waterdeep, and never did anything particularly awful to anyone on purpose (though of course, everyone has their moments of pettiness and the like) , nor does she have any malevolent intentions.
Her father, though, lived in duergar society for years, and he himself never saw anything wrong with the soul-crushing conditions inflicted on others as long as he was doing the crushing, as he was a captain in a duergar city. His only issue is that contrarily to the ideals of stoicness and emotional detachment his culture imposed, he genuinely, intensely loved his wife, enough to defy the authority if it had come to it. It never came while his wife was alive, though. But after she died, the daughter they had together grew up to a point she manifested a great enjoyment and a talent for artistic expression. And while he knew that he had to discipline her, to make her fit in the ultra-utilitarian-no-love-for-work duergar culture, and extinguish that spark for good... he couldn't do it. So he fled to the surface with her, where she could grow up happy.
Now, that old duergar isn't a good person. He doesn't regret any of the horrible things he did as captain, and in fact is quite nostalgic of them. He is deeply ashamed of not having followed the rules his gods and realm had given him, for something as stupid as love. And now that he's very old, he wants to go out with a bang and do something to redeem himself in the eyes of his deities. He'll probably try to have a fight to the death with the PC Cleric of Moradin in my group, because at least that would be dying doing something those who awaits him in the afterlife would 200% be behind.