The Unfun Question: Defilers, Hexblades, Hemomancers, oh my.

[Peachoo]

Hemomancers are alignment-locked to non-good as well, for much the same reason. Their magic is mostly dark and sinister, and no matter how perfectly wholesome their intents may be, by the nature of what they do, they -spread evil and entropy-.

Hi there!
So, I haven't had a moment to look at the other classes you mentioned here, but I had some time to look over Hemomancer with the creator of the class.
The wiki has been updated with a clarifying paragraph regarding the alignment of the class and why neutral alignment is allowed.

Hemomancers as a class is not about spreaading evil or entropy. It is a homebrew class entirely made up by the Arelith Team, with some themes inspired by pathfinder/3e classes.

Hemomancer's theme does, in fact, lean towards evil. But it leans towards evil in that Hemomancer's practice 'leeching life/energy from others to empower oneself.' Basically, they take life/energy/blood from others to empower themselves.

While Red Harvest is a spell that has the Evil tag, it can also be used on oneself. If the caster uses it on themselves, this is the neutral alignment option. There are also several spells the Hemomancer can cast that are not tagged with the Evil tag, and thus are not inherently evil.

If the spell, such as Massacre, has the Evil tag- then the act of casting the spell alone is in itself an evil act.

So, say that you have a neutral hemomancer casting massacre on a group of cyric cultists trying to do some dark ritual. While the hemomancer may be doing a good thing by killing the cyricists and stopping their ritual- casting the spell itself is considered an evil act and the Hemomancer may be judged according/suffer the ic consequences accordingly by good aligned pcs AND npcs.

Furthermore, casting such evil spells in public places where NPCS are will net the same reaction from the npcs that any other evil tagged spell would such as - animating the dead.

The world/setting is made in a way that non-playable characters can and should react to evil marked spells like this- as will deities and good aligned creatures judge a mortal casting these spells.

So it's important to keep the npcs in mind, as always, when rping and playing a neutral pc with an inherently 'evil' themed class.

The team did not want to limit players in utilizing this cool class, and I wholeheartedly agree. At the end of the day, it's how you use it. I would use your characters best judgement of what they'd know about a hemomancer/invoker class when encountering them and these evil spells.

Here is a link to the page. It should be under Hemomancer:
https://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Invoker#Not ... ancer_Path

I will take a look at the others as well mentioned in this post. But, I hope this clarifies for some of the confusion. I firmly believe, as well, that any homebrew class should be clarified as there is no source reference material to draw from. If you aren't ever sure, the Arelith Writing team can be contacted for questions regarding lore related content. Take care!

I think, uh, and I don't want to sound ungrateful for this response, I think you might've missed the point of my original question here. Whether or not Hemomancers are attempting to spread evil and entropy, they do. It's baked into a large portion of their kit, and using that kit does that thing. Spells with the evil-descriptor aside, it's been thumped a lot that negative energy has big not-good effects in lore. It's strongly associated with the lower planes, and the plane of shadow -- a place that arelith characters can visit to uh, see, and acts as an emboldening factor for undead.

Granted, I'm interpreting Hemomancer through scattered bits of lore that -do- already exist, but when you see things like entropic energy and negative energy, those things do have connotations, whether or not the wielder wants them to. Hemomancer might be a homebrew class, but it's not written into a vacuum.

But! I'm not particularly interested in seeing Hemomancer as an evil-locked class. In fact, I was using hemomancers as an example of why I think defiler clerics should probably be neutral at best, since they hit on similar notes.

Ah! I understand where you are coming from! I do not think you sound ungrateful, no worries!
The quote, "The dominant theme is 'leeching life/energy from others to empower oneself.'" came from the creator of the class when I looked into this, and that is where this came from.

I strongly agree with the creator that the class is up to interpretation, and I think if you want to interpret it like that ic or ooc, then there's absolutely no issue! Sorry if that came off any other way!

I think in terms of your question "Whether or not Hemomancers are attempting to spread evil and entropy" - well that is honestly up to the interpretation of character in game. From an ooc lore standpoint, the hemomancer class can be interpreted many ways and while it is evil leaning- we are not defining that the class seeks to spread evil and entropy as this would lock the alignment to evil realistically. The only spells that 'spread evil' or that 'are evil' are the ones with the Evil tag- and not all of the Hemomancer's spells are tagged with evil. Therefore, not all of the spells are meant to 'spread evil and entropy'.

[AstralUniverse]

I think in terms of your question "Whether or not Hemomancers are attempting to spread evil and entropy" - well that is honestly up to the interpretation of character in game. From an ooc lore standpoint, the hemomancer class can be interpreted many ways and while it is evil leaning- we are not defining that the class seeks to spread evil and entropy as this would lock the alignment to evil realistically. The only spells that 'spread evil' or that 'are evil' are the ones with the Evil tag- and not all of the Hemomancer's spells are tagged with evil. Therefore, not all of the spells are meant to 'spread evil and entropy'.

That's fine and dandy on paper but when you also factor in that defiler is a better healer than healer you end up with more goodie defilers than healer clerics. There should be some sort of limitation that keeps good alignment defilers less common than evil ones, and less common than good alignment healers, wouldnt you agree?

[Peachoo]

I think in terms of your question "Whether or not Hemomancers are attempting to spread evil and entropy" - well that is honestly up to the interpretation of character in game. From an ooc lore standpoint, the hemomancer class can be interpreted many ways and while it is evil leaning- we are not defining that the class seeks to spread evil and entropy as this would lock the alignment to evil realistically. The only spells that 'spread evil' or that 'are evil' are the ones with the Evil tag- and not all of the Hemomancer's spells are tagged with evil. Therefore, not all of the spells are meant to 'spread evil and entropy'.

That's fine and dandy on paper but when you also factor in that defiler is a better healer than healer you end up with more goodie defilers than healer clerics. There should be some sort of limitation that keeps good alignment defilers less common than evil ones, and less common than good alignment healers, wouldnt you agree?

I'm speaking specifically on Hemomancer only, not any of the other classes mentioned. I've not had a chance to look at those!

[definatelynothealbold]

I think in terms of your question "Whether or not Hemomancers are attempting to spread evil and entropy" - well that is honestly up to the interpretation of character in game. From an ooc lore standpoint, the hemomancer class can be interpreted many ways and while it is evil leaning- we are not defining that the class seeks to spread evil and entropy as this would lock the alignment to evil realistically. The only spells that 'spread evil' or that 'are evil' are the ones with the Evil tag- and not all of the Hemomancer's spells are tagged with evil. Therefore, not all of the spells are meant to 'spread evil and entropy'.

That's fine and dandy on paper but when you also factor in that defiler is a better healer than healer you end up with more goodie defilers than healer clerics. There should be some sort of limitation that keeps good alignment defilers less common than evil ones, and less common than good alignment healers, wouldnt you agree?

Healer clerics are in a pretty awful state right now after the Devs decided to rip it apart piece by piece and turn all their path abilities into domain abilities to basically force healers to take specific domains it feels like.. but unfortunately that's a completely different topic.

I do find it really dumb that Defilers get both to be super offensive, and good healers because their main spell which they can cast twice a round not only does massive chunks of damage but just keeps them alive endlessly, and you can't even properly defend against it.

[ReverentBlade]

can't even properly defend against it.

WASD more. If you're getting hit twice in a row by a touch attack spell, you've already errored.

[definatelynothealbold]

can't even properly defend against it.

WASD more. If you're getting hit twice in a row by a touch attack spell, you've already errored.

Right I'll just tell all the Martials and Casters to be able to cast while moving, and melee from a distance. While the hasted defiler chases them around, and also make sure no one has higher latency than 10 ms.

[ReverentBlade]

Just telling you how it is. My chances against someone that knows how to move properly in combat are much less than someone that doesn't, caster or melee. Defilers are hardly tearing up the PvP scene.

[Power Word, Haste]

Defilers are hardly tearing up the PvP scene.

hm

[Kenji]

If y’all have any mechanical feedback pertaining to defiler/healer, feel free to post them at their dedicated feedback thread:
viewtopic.php?f=37&t=34182

Otherwise let’s keep this thread on track. So far what I’ve garnered is:

1. Rename defiler path to something else - minimal mechanical impact, existing defilers can continue to call themselves defiler or whatever. This is similar to the True Flame/True Frost fluff name change
2. Limit Defilers to non-good only, if anyone is actually playing a Good Defiler, do let me know your character concept.
3. Don’t change a thing

I’ll do a poll on this eventually after giving it a few more days.

I’d like to note that I prefer to leave it to players to decide on anything conceptual or roleplay related, hence the popularity vote. Mechanics, however, will not and should not be decided by majority votes. Let’s keep the line clearly drawn.

[Paint]

While I'd be disappointed, I think I might be fine with Defiler just being refluffed a bit to allow for more interpretation; As much as I enjoy the idea of people having to think more about their character based on what magic they used, GrumpyCat made a pretty good point earlier in the thread about people not -really- changing up their playstyle a lot just because they're locked to neutral instead of being able to be good.

Someone's called it the 'tiefling' effect before; A bunch of neutral tielflings running around skirting the edge between altruism and edginess before the tiefling as good alignment major award came out, because they really wanted to play a good aligned tiefling, but couldn't.

If it wasn't such a big balance concern due to the disparity between positive and negative energy, I'd just suggest some sort of positive damage for good aligned 'defilers,' since positive essences and other sources of positive damage already exist. But considering it's much harder to defend against positive energy, and making a 'positive energy protection,' feels silly, there's not much point in it.

I'm still pretty adamant that there's not a lot of neutrality in what negative energy -is- and does, even if the force itself can be used by anyone with magical talent. (Although, it should be noted that if your cleric uses spells their god wouldn't approve of regularly, they probably shouldn't be a cleric of that god anymore, but graciously, cleric domains and the cleric spell list are largely not policed aside from gods who have banned domains.) And I do think it should have a noticeable impact on the characters that wield it with high frequency, but at the end of the day, if people don't want to have their class mechanics inform their roleplay, there's not much anyone can do.

I started out on Arelith not liking alignment-locked classes and PRCs because it's frustrating to have a concept that fits perfectly -aside- from the alignment, or to want to build something, but to need a certain alignment to be mechanically viable. A lot of Arelith design has diversified since then to make this a lot less of a frustration though, and I enjoy the idea of people needing to play out of their comfort zones if they want to do X or Y.

A lot of people would probably argue for good Warlocks being a thing on Arelith if you put it to a vote. I think a lot of folks would argue for good Hexblades if you put it to a vote, too. But what's the point of playing these class archetypes if you don't have to invest in what they -are- at their core -- and explore that through roleplay on this, a large roleplay server?

Mostly, I think Defiler losing its current description and staying the way it is right now in favor of something more open to interpretation is a missed opportunity to encourage people to think more critically about what it is they're playing and involve it in the story of their character. It might be unfun on a personal level to not be able to play x class with y alignment, but it helps inform the setting, create setting consistency, and the restrictions, in my opinion, lead to more interesting lines of thought.

Anyways, I appreciate everyone who shared their opinions in this thread. I think a lot of good points were made about the nature of alignment restrictions, and I learned a lot about what people on Arelith think about the lore surrounding certain varieties of magic.

[Subtext]

While I maintain that it shouldn't be contingent on the fact that negative energy is involved given how the inner planes are purposely unaligned in the setting, I suppose I can see it making sense to alignment lock classes with a more destructive setup...which Defilers surely are.
And why not just evil only then if the purpose is to nudge people into playing into the peculiarities of their chosen paths. At least the temptation to play an "uwu, I'm actually nice and kind" Defiler should be lower if evil is a requirement. I suppose neutral aligned chars sometimes need to be told to s*** or get off the pot.

In that vein, there may be a few other classes too that could use a similar treatment. Particularly elementalists (with their entire kit being about as destructive as possible), ench and necro specialists (mind control and undead stuff as their primary features) and possibly Vigilantes in regards to the fear techniques (Spreading terror in the name of a better cause is still...kinda evil).
But that's a different discussion.

[The GrumpyCat]

I feel that this thread has very much run it's course. Everyone here I want to add, has comported themselves absolutly splendedly, it's been a really interesting and respectful discussion so there's nothing negative about this lock - I just think there's not much more to be said/done at this point, now that the developer has promised a poll, and the OP seems to have also rounded out their own thoughts.

Hopefully there should be a poll on this soon, so we can all vote and give our thoughts there.

If someone reading this /really/ feels like they've got more to add- I don't object to them making another thread about the same issue. But I would strongly suggest waiting until the poll is out, and giving their thoughts there.

-GrumpyCat.