[3.5] Are BoED and BoVD Considered "Canon"?

[Shining Wrath]

Very narrowly, since your title says 3.5, BoVD is 3.0 and not re-released, while BoED is a 3.5 release, so:
BoED: canon.
BoVD: not-canon.

In every campaign I've ever seen the DM houserules both as "Ask me first before you use this stuff". And in general no DM wants MindRape coming within 500 nautical miles of his campaign. That spell goes beyond winning encounters to altering major NPCs into tools of the PCs with no more autonomy than an animal companion.

[MadGreenSon]

And in general no DM wants MindRape coming within 500 nautical miles of his campaign. That spell goes beyond winning encounters to altering major NPCs into tools of the PCs with no more autonomy than an animal companion.

As someone who's been DMing for... oh god above 23 years I can say with certainty that I would fully allow PCs to use Mindrape or Sanctify the Wicked as long as they're willing to deal with enemies who will do the same.

I have no problems taking the gloves off. Those two books are full of interesting tools, I am not afraid to use them.
It's just some of the fluff is so cheesy, I mean c'mon the Humans with Evil Hats and their counterparts the Halflings with Evil Hats? Gimme a break...
Also, The Dread Emperor has gotta be the most flamboyantly EVUL!!! NPC I have ever seen a write up for. He walks around with children chained to his armor fergodsakes...

On the Shiny Side, the Beloved of Valarian seems to take the whole Unicorn-Virgin Girl-Purity thing to a silly extreme and the Apostle of Peace needs to get his hippie self a job.

I really like the expansion of the character options and the exploration of the Upper and Lower Planes as well as the idea of the Celestial Paragons to be counterparts/opposition to the Arch-Demons and Devils.

There's a lot of good to be had once you scrape off the cheese.

(Also? Ravages? Really? Just let the good guys use friggin' poison and call it poison if yer gonna do that!)

[The Viscount]

I always saw the difference between Mindrape and the Redeem-Good equivalent to be about preserving the essential core person.

Mindrape, you basically kill someone's personality and graft a new one. It's no different than murder. It may even be worse, when you start considering how it will affect someone's core soul in the afterlife.

The Redeem-Good spell takes the bad guy as is, and force them to come to an epiphany regarding the evils of their way. It's just as much oppressive, but it's not destroying the base personality. A jerkass will still be a jerkass. He will remember his past, but see it in a different light.

I would be willing to agree with this except for 2 important things.

First: The spell changes the target's alignment to match yours, even along the law/chaos alignment, which means you are changing very fundamental aspects of the target of the spell. If the spell were just about goodness, it wouldn't change the law/chaos, but it does, which makes the spell all the more uncomfortable.

Second: The spell can be used on evil outsiders, though they do not receive the sanctified template due to irritating inconsistencies, they still change to good. Beings like the obyrith are ancient evils that embody and manifest from evil itself. To say that these creatures have a spark of goodness is to disagree with most of what is said about them.

[georgie_leech]

Incidentally, on the evidence that Sanctify the Wicked is more about magic than a real epiphany, the text says that if the diamond is destroyed before the year is up, the creature is restored to their original condition. Strictly speaking, if you break the diamond 11 months, 29 days and 14399 rounds after casting the spell, the captured soul doesn't change at all (minus whatever being stuck in a gem for year would do), while doing so one round later drastically changes the creature's alignment.

[Phelix-Mu]

Evil souls typically suffer horrifically after death (assuming they actually ever die). Maybe sanctify the wicked just gives them a taste of the future, and allows them to turn back. The spell concept is good, but its implementation is pretty terrible.

It still strikes me as nicer than just axing bad guys. Unfortunately, due to the cost and time involved, it's ultimately not an effective strategy unless used on some really powerful enemies (that are fairly likely to have a way to make that save). StW on the village Lothario is not a useful investment of resources.

And, frankly, the whole point of mindrape is that ultimate power over another person, to the extent of turning the target's free will into a mockery, is the epitome of corruption. "To make someone into something that they are not" is a great power for evil, and perverting the lives of others is at least as evil as not valuing them at all (a la murder).

[Cikomyr]

Incidentally, on the evidence that Sanctify the Wicked is more about magic than a real epiphany, the text says that if the diamond is destroyed before the year is up, the creature is restored to their original condition. Strictly speaking, if you break the diamond 11 months, 29 days and 14399 rounds after casting the spell, the captured soul doesn't change at all (minus whatever being stuck in a gem for year would do), while doing so one round later drastically changes the creature's alignment.

Can you reverse Purge the Wicked with Break Enchantment/dispel magic?

[Coidzor]

Because it is a whole lot easier to completely delete someone's mind and remake them in your image than it is to jail someone until all the horrible things they have done finally click and they are guilted to good.

Eh, Mindrape only does that if you want it to. It certainly can delete their mind, it could just alter them slightly, or it could be done without any actual change, as nothing more than a fact-finding mission.

[georgie_leech]

Can you reverse Purge the Wicked with Break Enchantment/dispel magic?

Break Enchantment, no; it's a Necromancy spell. Dispel/Disjunction et al, maybe? The Duration says "see text" and then never elaborates. It suggests that it's a non-magical effect due to an epiphany, but as I pointed out, apparently the epiphany occurs in the last six seconds of the duration. I'm going to say probably not; best guess is that it's an instantaneous effect rather than a permanent one.

[Psyren]

Incidentally, on the evidence that Sanctify the Wicked is more about magic than a real epiphany, the text says that if the diamond is destroyed before the year is up, the creature is restored to their original condition. Strictly speaking, if you break the diamond 11 months, 29 days and 14399 rounds after casting the spell, the captured soul doesn't change at all (minus whatever being stuck in a gem for year would do), while doing so one round later drastically changes the creature's alignment.

Again, you're looking at the spell in the wrong way. The designer likely thought of it more like a Restoration spell - which, incidentally, is another spell whose casting time is longer than the time units used by the game, and another spell whose magic all happens in last 6 seconds of casting. If you are casting Restoration for 2 rounds, or Greater Restoration for 9 minutes and 54 seconds, then get interrupted, nothing will happen - but that doesn't mean that being level-drained, ability-damaged, fatigued etc. are your natural state just because the spell failed to remove them.

I'm not saying I fully agree with Sanctify (I don't fully agree with Rousseau either, after all), but the spell is at least consistent with the moral premise on which the book is based.

[Zaydos]

On the subject of Sanctify the Wicked and alignment the Harmonium in 2e had a secret operation on the 2nd layer of Arcadia where they forcibly converted people to Lawful Good (exact way not described except that it involved magic). It resulted in the entire 2nd layer of Arcadia sliding into Mechanus because it was too Lawful and not enough good for the plane that was Lawful Goodish. So Sanctify the Wicked being Lawful over Good fits with the 2e presentation of such things where they actually explored Law v Chaos.

[hamishspence]

I don't throw out all of it. It's one of the first, if not the first, 3.5 books to say that maybe going around being an unrepentant murderhobo isn't the nicest thing for players to be doing, even to aberrations, chromatic dragons, and yes, even fiends.

Indeed. That's probably one of its biggest selling points for me at least.

[georgie_leech]

Again, you're looking at the spell in the wrong way. The designer likely thought of it more like a Restoration spell - which, incidentally, is another spell whose casting time is longer than the time units used by the game, and another spell whose magic all happens in last 6 seconds of casting. If you are casting Restoration for 2 rounds, or Greater Restoration for 9 minutes and 54 seconds, then get interrupted, nothing will happen - but that doesn't mean that being level-drained, ability-damaged, fatigued etc. are your natural state just because the spell failed to remove them.

I'm not saying I fully agree with Sanctify (I don't fully agree with Rousseau either, after all), but the spell is at least consistent with the moral premise on which the book is based.

Is the spell found here the same as that found in the book itself? If so, it's just a standard action to set up, rather than needing a casting time of a year. Casting spells that have long casting times don't have an effect until finished because, presumably, the caster is shaping the magical energy to get the effect in the first place, while Sanctify the Wicked is supposedly working for the entire time. In other words, if the spell actually works over time, why is that last six seconds the difference from being "none of that matters in the slightest and I shall continue to be Evil" and "I've been a terrible person/fiend/whatever and have seen the error of my ways and now thoroughly agree with the caster (even if I hate his guts personally)"? Fluff-wise it acts over a year; mechanics-wise, it's a year long imprisonment with a sudden alignment shift in the last six seconds of the duration.

If the text is different, consider my objection withdrawn.

[Psyren]

Is the spell found here the same as that found in the book itself? If so, it's just a standard action to set up, rather than needing a casting time of a year. Casting spells that have long casting times don't have an effect until finished because, presumably, the caster is shaping the magical energy to get the effect in the first place, while Sanctify the Wicked is supposedly working for the entire time. In other words, if the spell actually works over time, why is that last six seconds the difference from being "none of that matters in the slightest and I shall continue to be Evil" and "I've been a terrible person/fiend/whatever and have seen the error of my ways and now thoroughly agree with the caster (even if I hate his guts personally)"? Fluff-wise it acts over a year; mechanics-wise, it's a year long imprisonment with a sudden alignment shift in the last six seconds of the duration.

If the text is different, consider my objection withdrawn.

The casting time you have there is correct - however, your disconnect seems to be from a game terminology perspective. Basically, the listed casting time of 1 standard action followed by 1 year of "therapy" is necessary for game flow, because even though a true casting time of 1 year would probably be more accurate in terms of how the spell actually functions, it would also be unnecessarily restrictive on the player. Remember that spells with multiple days of cast time, like Legend Lore, keep you from doing basically anything else other than casting, eating, sleeping, and waking up to cast some more. Imposing an entire year of that inactivity on the player wouldn't just be boring or derail a campaign, it would also prevent the caster from defending their ward or even themselves during the redemption process. This is particularly problematic if you consider the issue of reprisal; for example, if you have an high-ranking Drow or Mindflayer soul inside your gem, or an evil dragon, you're going to be a magnet for assaults from their fellows who seek to either recover or slay your charge before it can be redeemed. Worse still would be fiendish interference, as devils/demons would want to smash the gem and claim the wicked soul for themselves before it can be taken from their grasp by the forces of good. At those levels, you can't even hide very effectively - everything you do, especially something of this magnitude, resonates through the universe and can be detected.

By wording it this way instead, the spell allows the magic to keep working on the target without so thoroughly limiting the caster's response to external threats.

[Phelix-Mu]

Plus, over the year of time, the piece of the caster's soul used to fuel the spell is probably giving the evil soul some individual therapy or something. The price of the spell is huge, and it's slow enough that there is no even mid-term benefit to saving Mr. Big Bad. And, as Psyren notes, you have to babysit it, lest that spent level go to waste.

While it may seem unfair to the evil being to StW it, the universe ultimately chews up most evil souls and spits them out. Saving another from an eternity of perdition is generally seen as noble among good people (even if it's possible for a soul to willingly choose damnation/Lower Planes, it's fairly hard for most good people to comprehend such a choice).

[rmnimoc]

Is the spell found here the same as that found in the book itself? If so, it's just a standard action to set up, rather than needing a casting time of a year. Casting spells that have long casting times don't have an effect until finished because, presumably, the caster is shaping the magical energy to get the effect in the first place, while Sanctify the Wicked is supposedly working for the entire time. In other words, if the spell actually works over time, why is that last six seconds the difference from being "none of that matters in the slightest and I shall continue to be Evil" and "I've been a terrible person/fiend/whatever and have seen the error of my ways and now thoroughly agree with the caster (even if I hate his guts personally)"? Fluff-wise it acts over a year; mechanics-wise, it's a year long imprisonment with a sudden alignment shift in the last six seconds of the duration.

If the text is different, consider my objection withdrawn.

Think of evil like a chemical dependency. For this example, Evil is cocaine.
When you go to rehab(STW is cast), you are there so that you can exist in a cocaine(Evil) free enviroment. You are held there for however long it takes to break the chemical dependency(1 year). After you are done with that time, you are no longer chemically dependent and can go about your way, though with a chance of relapse(falling back to evil). If you are let out of rehab before that time is up, be it by a month or by an hour, you are still chemically dependent on the substance, and you have a very high chance of using again.

That is how that works in my head. You spend a year being relieved of your spiritual dependence on Evil. It hurts, withdrawl isn't fun, and then after it passes you are a new man. You have become a better person because of it. You get out too early, and your soul is still screaming for evil, unable to get the relief it was so close to.

Yeah, I feel like that is actually a WAY better parallel than the prison one I made earlier.



Sanctify the Wicked is forced rehab for your soul.

[HunterOfJello]

Both books have plenty of fluff that are generally not considered canon and both books have content that most groups will consider to be optional based on a DM ruling rather than available by default.


The majority of their crunch content is considered "canon"/available by default for groups, if that is what your question was.



I personally like both books and think that both present amazing options for characters. I am very glad that WotC produced each of the books.

[Telok]

Generally I don't like BoVD because I quickly figured out level 3 cleric feats/spells/item combo that would slap out a +36 to religion checks and let you roll 2d20 and take the highest die.

Honestly I sort of view the two books like I view the Trunamer. A nice idea/attempt but there's too much in them that just doesn't play nice with the rest of the game for me to use them without several pages of house rules.

Oh, that build is:
Cleric 3.
Items: Masterwork Kn:Religion book, Crystal Mask of Knowledge (Religion)[XPH]
Feats: Skill Focus (Religion), Sacrifical Mastery [BoVD]
Spells: Divine Insight [SpC], Insight of Good Fotrune [PHBII], Sacrificial Skill [BoVD]

[Augmental]

Think of evil like a chemical dependency. For this example, Evil is cocaine.
When you go to rehab(STW is cast), you are there so that you can exist in a cocaine(Evil) free enviroment. You are held there for however long it takes to break the chemical dependency(1 year). After you are done with that time, you are no longer chemically dependent and can go about your way, though with a chance of relapse(falling back to evil). If you are let out of rehab before that time is up, be it by a month or by an hour, you are still chemically dependent on the substance, and you have a very high chance of using again.

Rehab is a gradual process, not something where it has no effect if you get out even six seconds early.

[TuggyNE]

Rehab is a gradual process, not something where it has no effect if you get out even six seconds early.

True to an extent, but it is still possible to relapse, and within the level of abstraction the game uses, I'm not sure it's practical to model this more precisely.