reference: http://projectraven.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3559

Does the reverse, slay living, have the same restrictions?

If raising one from the dead is considered the ultimate expression of a diety's power and entrusted to only a few who have earned it... shouldn't slay living have the exactly same restrictions?

Why? Any bafoon can pick up a sword and slay living.

Bringing the dead back to life is an incredible miracle.

Oroborous Why? Any bafoon can pick up a sword and slay living.

Bringing the dead back to life is an incredible miracle.

One touch and you're dead - and that's NOT a miracle of the same order? To kill ANYONE with a mere touch?

Slay living spell and hacking someone apart are NOT the same thing.

No more a miracle than sticking a bit of metal in them, or lighting them on fire, or freezing their muscles in place.

Sending a soul to the afterlife is easy, thousands of ways to do it. There is ONE way to bring a soul back.

Oroborous No more a miracle than sticking a bit of metal in them, or lighting them on fire, or freezing their muscles in place.

You're missing one VERY important difference - with Slay Living, you are basically ripping the soul out of the body - without damaging the body itself.

There are limitless ways to damage the body and release the soul. There are very few to simply rip it out with all the muss and fuss of blood and burning flesh.

Slay Living doesn't have the same restrictions. As far as I'm aware, we don't plan on implementing them. In practical terms, Slay Living is basically the same as every other combat spell.

Pretty much any 5th level spell or above that a cleric casts is a significant miracle. Raise Dead and Resurrection have the restrictions because they are a special class of miracle that go substantially beyond the other, er, ordinary high-level cleric miracles.

Aah...

So if there's nothing particularly special about Slay Living, then it's a perfectly valid spell to use for a LG cleric as it is for a CE one?

No nonsense of "you can't do that, you're good"?

Certain spells are inherently evil, such as Necromancy. Specifally; Animation of the Dead. (This sounds like a campaign front >.>).

In anycase, I don't see how Slay Living is evil. It kills the victim, much the same as other spells do; Hammer of the Gods, Acid Arrow, Fireball, Etc.

I don't see how it's evil to use the Spell Slay Living to kill your victim when it's perfectly legit to call down a Hammer of the Gods, or a Fireball. They both accomplish the same thing. The only reason Animating the Dead is evil is not the spell itself, but rather the result; A Zombie/Skeleton who's a slave to it's master. That is the evil act.

/me rubs his hands with glee!

Slay Living has the Death and Negative descriptors. It doesn't have the Evil descriptor.

Animate Dead, to compare, has the Evil descriptor.

Raise Dead has no descriptor.

Goodly clerics shouldn't be using spells with the Evil descriptor -- at some point those spells may get scripted to give shifts toward Evil if cast by Good characters. Clerics may also choose to not use certain spells if they don't like them (you may have an aversion to Negative energy spells, for example), but there is no strict binding obligation that good clerics not use spells such as Slay Living or Fear or Clarity that don't explicitly have the Evil descriptor.

Now, obviously, if a goodly cleric is using Slay Living to murder innocent people, or Fear to torture innocent people, that's objectionable, but it's objectionable because it's a goodly cleric murdering/torturing innocent people, not because of the spells themselves.

Think of it in terms of "graphics" how would it look like in a movie?

The rip-soul-out-of body part would probably look like a cleric making a gripping motion at his target and pulling back slowly. The target would be making screaming/shuddering movements, as a ghostly mirrow image is pulls out of him, before the body collapses and the mirror image slowly dissipates

please keep in mind you actually have to acheive sufficient level to cast slay living, and many would consider reaching level 9 especially here to be a small miracle in and of itself.

:P