RPing and Spells
Felspawn
Member Posts: 161
Does anyone else feel odd casting spells that seem contrary to your alighnment? for example i have a cleric i am messing around with, since hes good, and since it makes no sense to not take the Lathandar kit hes one of those. So you have this cleric to is all anti-undead and yet there it is.... Animate Dead. There is nothing stoping you from casting it aside from your own feeling that it seems wrong, anyone else feel that way?
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Serious answer: yeah, it makes no sense. It stems from divine spheres not being properly implemented in BG.
Ofcourse if you are playing a priest of Lathander and have your skeleton warriors slaughter commoners and the like, you are doing it wrong. But I think a Tempus Priest like Branwen, can call upon the help of her fallen comrades, even ancestors, for one last time. As in, not even death and being rotten to the bone can quench their warrior spirits. Heh.
There are other, evil-like spells actually. Cause wounds, poison, slay living, harm are very malicious in PnP play and only evil aligned casters and deities employ them with ease. For a good character to be granted a Slay living spell from his good deity would be a very rare occurence, indeed.
Then as for mage spells, most of the damagin spells can be argued to be evil, a fireball burns people's flesh and brings a most horrible and agonising death to masses. Yet it is the mage's use that makes the spell evil or not. When used in self defense or against an evil enemy, it is no different than a paladin's sword.
Then again, spells such as Flesh to Stone, Disintegrate and Finger of Death and quite possibly Imprisonment, are quite malicious and cruel. Sure they all get rid of an enemy, but...Flesh to Stone turns a sentient being into a trophy of sorts, and can be used as cruel entertainment and humiliation. Disintegrate utterly destroys the target, reducing a sentient being into nothingness, it is like the act of purest hatred, not just kill in self defense. Finger of Death severs the spirit-body connection and in PnP, victims of the spell can be raised as JuJu zombies under the will of the caster, which is different and much more of an evil act than Animate Dead. In Animate Dead you summon up long dead bones of the deceased to do your bidding one time, in Finger of Death you purposedly kill a living being to turn him into an undead slave. Forever. Also, Imprisonment is cruel and permanent and much feared. Power Word:Kill is like, real soft when compared to them.
Depending on the situation Aerie might be willing to use some darker magic. She has some dialogue with Haer'Dalis about "destroying evil" and whatnot, and I think one of her epilogues involves a bloody crusade against slavers (though its been a while so I might be remembering wrong.) So if it will ensure the survival of innocents and benefit the "greater good" I could see Aerie being willing to unleash some truly horrific magics against particularly villanous people. Though I agree it is unlikely that Baervan would grant her the ability to summon demons and the like.
As for wizards and casters, anything with an "Evil" or "Good" descriptor would need to be chosen and used carefully or run the risk of impacting your alignment. In the PnP arena, picking spells was as much a function of your playing your role (and alignment) as anything else.
CRPG games unfortunately are not like that.
I can see the case being made for spells that actually have alignment descriptors, but if it doesn't and it just "seems like a dark spell," then the DM shouldn't restrict them. Using dark power to facilitate good acts is a common trope. Then again, so is trying to use dark power to good aims ultimately corrupting the character. Sounds like excellent material for roleplay!
a) Don't roleplay spell selection.
b) Don't use those spells you deem "wrong" for the character's alignment.
The third solution is to continue feeling odd about conjuring undead to do the bidding of your otherwise friendly cleric.
With sorcery its a little more complex. Depending on the setting, the character's powers may have nothing to do with their alignment. In fact, in most settings I've played in those who don't use clerical magic have almost no use for alignment other than role playing. Now if say the DM of a setting decides any sort of summons is innately evil, a mage may be faced with quite a moral and role playing dilemma if he wants to stay good. The biggest consequence of dabbling in "dark arts" may be that friends and companions no longer trust him. Although something more dire is possible too, maybe playing with things opposed to your ethos could have more concrete effects on skills or abilities. Quite a lot of possibilities there!
Although honestly, I've never seen such a thing happen in a game I've played in. Everyone I've played with has pretty simply said "well if its evil I'll just burn the scroll..."
I usually have a basic approach set in my head about this for the type of game I intend to play. But as a rule I don't have good aligned spellcasters use evil magics, and vice versa. In some cases it might be justified, though, as others have said.
I sometimes have a specialist mage cast entirely their own school's spells, or at least mostly from their specialization school. It makes for a more interesting game strategically.
Let's take Animate Dead for example. It has an EVIL descriptor next to it as the negative energy used to reanimate the bodies is inherently evil... because it is. However, there's nothing stopping you from using it to create mindless, souless undead such as zombies and skeletons, that means you are not enslaving the souls of the long dead or whatever to create them. And because they are completely bound to your will, there's nothing stopping you from commanding them to help that poor farmer harvest his crops or whatever.
Fireball and Lightning Bolt on the other hand don't have any kind of descriptor yet you are basically burning and frying your foes to death, sure sound like suffering to me.
Basically, I think this kind of stuff is better left for roleplaying.
But Divine spell casting is a whole other arena. it isn't so much a Deity not wanting a Cleric to cast a given spell so much as the Cleric is an extension of the Deities power. A God of Lawful good would simply never consider that the means justified the ends. They wouldn't need to. They are GODS. Add to the fact that they would generally prefer their minions to only cast spells from their sphere of influence and that only further limits the choices.
Most DMs (in my experience) will give the player a whole lot of latitude, particularly if it falls in the realm of furthering the campaign. But, I would think that latitude would only go so far.
Now, with that having been said, this is a CRPG. The player has a whole lot more latitude in the matter and a Cleric of a Lawful Good God who's sphere is the opposite of undead, is still perfectly capable of creating skeletons etc.... And no one is saying that anyone needs to RP. Just saying that I hold myself (and no one else) to a certain personal standard of role playing.
But yeah, I get what you mean. Light Side Jedi get force push and heal. Sith get Force Lightning and Choke. Hardly seems fair. But then again, Lucas has stated that 'The Dark Side is more powerful', even if Yoda doesn't agree.
I think its perfectly fair to have "evil" as more powerful in some ways; it should be all more overt displays of power and not worrying so much about consequences or who gets hurt.
While good should require more patience and wisdom to be effective with.
Added to Push and Heal are a bunch of self-buffs. When I think about good guys in combat, there's almost always some element of virtue to it. The good guy beats the bad guy in fair combat, 1-on-1. The magic that backs the good guy up is internal. So spells like DuHM, Prot. Evil. Righteous Magic. On the fighter/mage side, Tenser's Transformation, Haste, Strength. That sort of thing. Then, once buffed, they take their equivalent of the +5 Holy Avenger and do battle with the sinister villain, who will promptly cheat and use projectiles (fire and lightning).
My usual problem with good guy spells isn't even that they aren't powerful... Just that they're boring, and not at all flashy. I think that's why you see the trope of magical power summoning an ominous yet unthreatening thunderstorm. Gotta give people SOMETHING to look at that says, "See!? Power!"
And yeah, Wizards are all about the show. What is the point of being able to flay someone alive if you can't make it flashy enough to be a fun night out for the kids.
Plus, remember that by the end of the first game, Charname will have killed HUNDREDS if not thousands. Mass Murder? Child's play. Just sayin, trying to be lily white in this game is next to impossible.
When I play i usually picture that a good mage or cleric would not hesitate to use force against an evil enemy, just like a good fighter wouldnt. Any good mage would use Bigby's Crushing hand against an evil demon if he could?
This isn't a Varon-T Disruptor after all.
At the end of the day I usually go with the philosophy that "Gun's don't kill people. People kill people." So long as it doesn't kill in any unnatural way (level drain, Skull Trap, Vamp-touch, Ghoul Touch, etc...) and have an 'Evil' descriptor, it is open game. If you want an interesting take on the whole thing, read some of the Dresden files books. Harry thinks nothing of cooking some evil baddie and sleeping at night.
Now, if said mage was indiscriminately killing people with no reason, I might have issue with his Lawful Good status. but that would be because of him killing people, not because he chose to roast them instead of putting them to sleep and then slitting their throats.
As a Sorcerer, he will do whatever it takes to keep his miniature giant space hamster familiar safe from harm.
"If my huge sword is not enough to split the backside of Evil, then I will use flaming balls of goodness! Stop eating out of the spell component bag, Boo!"