Can these NOT give your party and yourself evil points? The LN Yurtrus cleric with death domain kinda loses the point if he goes evil and can no longer cast.

I agree with Tom, this needs to be changed. Evil and good are relative. You can do something someone considers "evil" for a good cause.

irrespective of what yout character 'believes' in D&D..good and evil are uniformly fact... and clearly defined.

summoning any form of spirit through necromancy is considered an evil act.

this is not the real world.. This is a fantasy world... it has its own laws of physics and morality.. the alignment scale being a prime example.

irrespective of what yout character 'believes' in D&D..good and evil are uniformly fact... and clearly defined.

summoning any form of spirit through necromancy is considered an evil act.

this is not the real world.. This is a fantasy world... it has its own laws of physics and morality.. the alignment scale being a prime example.

what about the chaotic good they do so many things people consider evil just to do the just thing in the end. atleast thats how i have always viewed it, i mean really if its a fantasy world we could do it all opposite of what its considered now. We have a baseline for it all and the many many loop holes that come with this unspecific baseline. tom and the guest are just trying to suggest a very reasonable perspective that will hopefully make game alittle more enjoyable for everyone.

I thought we'd established that a death avatar is an outsider and not undead and that summoning one is not evil. Unless it's been changed, Kelemvor grants the undead avatars to his people, and he's LN. I may of course be wrong about both though.

That aside, I have a problem with scripted alignment shifts eitherway regarding this issue or any other.

Yurtrus grants clerical alignments of: Lawful neutral, Chaotic Neutral, and neutral evil. He grants an Avatar to each, but if we become evil from using this avatar, and end up being Lawful evil, and can no longer level or cast, who's fault is this? I kinda would like NOT becoming evil from using my death avatar, Vrigdush's personality is entirely Lawful neutral, he doesn't break tradition or the Orc tribe, and is practically a judge ((Of who dies)). Becoming evil from using a power his Deity grants him is B.S.

Another thing that always confuses me. How is summoning a Balor (outsider), one of the evilest creatures out there, considered not evil. When summoning an undead is considered evil? How does it even matter? You can summon an undead to help defend a child, very unlikely, but it can happen. So how does this make summoning an undead compared to an outsider evil?

Because, as far as I gather, the very act of summoning an undead is in fact summoning and binding through very painful negative energy another, dead soul.

Isnt summoning anything properly binding it to your will? How is it any different then anything else? Its still forcing something from another plane and making it listen to you. The only things that come willingly are normally evil outsiders, and they only come for an opportunity to kill/maim/torture people from the plain they are summoned to.

Difference though is that when you create an Undead you don't just bind it to your will for a period of time - you damn it for an eternity of pain without possibility of release or freedom. Sort of. Even Summons, theoretically, have a will (at least in PnP, but, as stated this isn't PnP)

Summoning an evil outsider is an evil act, and someone can probably pull a quote from a source book to back this up. I'm pretty sure that only when an evil outsider is summoned are evil points given. Kelemvor should be sending a neutral avatar. Yurtrus, being evil, should be sending an evil avatar.

The fact that Yurtrus doesn't support adjacent alignments for clerics is somewhat odd. A suggestion to change his cleric alignments might be better received.

I'd like to address some of the tangents, but please comment on them in a General Discussions thread if you want to reply:

• Certain spells, such as Animate Dead, have the Evil descriptor (in sources such as the Player's Handbook, at least).
• Chaos is opposed by Law. Not all Lawful characters are required to seek confrontation with Chaotic ones, and it isn't a relative point of view of Good/Evil but a cosmic position of Law and Chaos. Evil is Evil. Chaos is Chaos. This helps Good (and Neutral, and Evil) characters to highlight/defend conflict with other members of their alignment.
• Evil tends to reflect willfully causing pain beyond punishment or retribution, or knowingly consorting with creatures that practically embody Evil (typically, Outsiders). The creation of undead is the former. Simply summoning a ghost (an Undead, not an Outsider) doesn't have to be an Evil act, but creating the ghost to be summoned would be.

mjones3

what about the chaotic good they do so many things people consider evil just to do the just thing in the end.

then they should be earning evil points....

but to address the issue again... if you follow an evil god and use the powers granted to you by said god.. isn't it kinda obvious that you would become more like that god? this would be especially true for clerics who are the embodiment of the gods' divine will upon the land..

Not to pick a fight with ascotbay but summoning any undead is evil even a ghost. The spell Summon Undead in the Spell compendium has the evil descriptor.

what about the chaotic good they do so many things people consider evil just to do the just thing in the end.

Being chaotic doesn't make you goals any different from lawful chaarcters, simply that you go about a different means, performing evil acts is still evil (hence the chaotic evil alignment). The example given in the player's handbook, Robin hood, he stole from the rich, but only those he himself beleived to be personally corrupt, he never stole from any baron or lord he beleived to be good. By your argument, since giving to the poor is considered good, he would be justified in stealing from kind and decent folk.

Simply put: the good/evil descriptor is the goal, and the law/chaos are the means to achieving that goal.

I like that last bit of input here and it is exactly why I detest the idea of scripted alignment shifts. It's arguable that a man can even be driven so chaotically towards a good goal that he wouldn't even stop to consider the consequence of summoning undead in an act of benevolence if he were fighting to save his family for instance. Doesn't make him evil, but would definately make him chaotic. It's stereotypically assumed that anyone summoning undead does so with ill intentions. Though if he's trained to use such an ability there is a good chance he knows the suffering it inflicts and knowingly accepting that is evil.

To get a good idea of what needs done I think first we need to have a reference to the nature of an "Avatar of Death". Is it summoned or created? Is it undead or an outsider? If it is a created undead then I suggest Thomas that you reconsider your character's alignment anyway. If he isn't evil he likely wouldn't be using the ability even if the diety does grant it.

In either case I still believe the staff should remove the scripted shifting. If the character has the ability odds are 90% certain the character is evil already and if DMs take enough notice of the character to slide him towards good they should be able to take just as much to slide him back in these cases.

Also, it allows for neutral characters to amass lots of experience through unrestricted-by-paladin questing; and then rock out on summoning their avatar to make them eb0l. Summoning an evil outsider/undead is evil, but alignment shifts should almost always be overseen by a DM.