A prophecy foretells that the next born child of a maiden, we'll call her Karen, is going to bring forth the end of times and will be born as the evilest being the multiverse has ever known.
based on this situation, what spells, abilities, etc. do you think would help a character figure out information about the child before it was born? For example, how would you be able to tell Karen was pregnant early into her term? Obviously the first answer you'd expect is a detect life spell but would a detect good and evil spell work? If you were trying to detect the alignment of a child in the womb, at what point would that alignment become detectable? at conception? A few weeks/months into the term? Since some creatures such as goblins are naturally born evil, at what point does that alignment become evident in the child? If the child was born from a magical being such as a djinn or fiend would detect magic do the trick based on the fact that they have a magical heritage? I've tried to look online for information about whether you can detect the existence of a child in the womb using spells like detect good and evil and other alternatives to just good old fashioned detect life and have found not even a single topic discussing this type of situation. It may be something most campaigns won't come across but in mine specifically something has come up that has me thinking about this (no it is not the above mentioned scenario.) What are your thoughts about this?
Detect Evil and Good doesn't detect evil creatures or people, it detects the presence of aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead creatures. If this child is a genuine Fiend then it would be detected by this or a Paladin's Divine Sense, or any other spell that finds such beings. Otherwise, if you know enough about this unborn child then Locate Creature might work. Beyond that it is time to ask some more powerful being, via something like Commune.
I'm of the opinion that something like this would be more nurture than nature and would not allow detect good and evil to identify the presence of something other than the mother if she was one of the options described in the spell. I might allow detect magic if there was something magical about the baby inherently that was different from the mother. This difference might be the driving force that led the child to the experiences where the child chose to become the evil menace that was prophesied.
Of course, prophecies are sometimes difficult to decipher because of language translations, archaic terms, vague descriptions, or other factors. The Jews thought that the prophesied Messiah would be a great King that would establish Israel as a dominant country, but Christian teachings say that person was Jesus Christ who was born as the son of a carpenter and who claimed his royal heritage after his death (details may be off depending on religion, I'm only using the information as an example). Anakin Skywalker was the Chosen One who was supposed to bring balance to the Force. Whether that was accomplished, and, if so how, is open for debate.
However, I wouldn't be against someone having different ideas about the topic in their story. I could definitely see scenarios where it would be plausible for the situation you discussed could be discerned through detect good and evil, particularly if the mother was somehow a different type than the child. Thus, I would either talk with the DM about what their setting is like, or give it a try in game. After all, if you are curious about it, then it would stand to reason that a character would be as well. Talking to the DM might give you some insight about what exactly the character would know about that situation.
This sounds like it will become a case of self-fufilling prophecy. Players try to stop the child from being born. Their actions cause the mother to seek protection from the players for her child. Evil being tricks mom and causes the baby to become evil.
This sounds like it will become a case of self-fufilling prophecy. Players try to stop the child from being born. Their actions cause the mother to seek protection from the players for her child. Evil being tricks mom and causes the baby to become evil.
I like that a lot. Where do I sign up to find out what else happens?
Scrying might work. The problem is that the child is in total cover and there is no line of sight. That eliminates a lot of spells and effects. Locate spells detect the closest thing you are looking for, so if you are too general the mother will ping and give a false reading.
All good ideas now let's change the scenario a little bit just to have an idea of how a different situation would affect a group's interests or ability to come across this information.
A PC who tends to party often and be sexually active with NPCs (and maybe even occasionally party members) is not careful of their actions and ends up pregnant. The PC is a tiefling and therefore has at least some natural magic in it's blood through the infernal heritage.
at what point would any of the spells discussed be able to detect that child? Seeing as no one in the scenario has any reason to expect it's existence or a reason to be looking for it specifically, what spells could accidentally detect it while they were doing something else and at what point would they be able to?
Go see a paladin for 5 points of Lay on Hands if you are suddenly feeling unwell for no apparent reason and put an early end to that disease and/or parasitic infestation.
I think having NPCs commenting to her, perhaps having a god of a non evil alignment and a domain that would be affected by the prophesied evil talk to a cleric/priest (PC or NPC), if you wanted to say that the baby is so evil already that the mother's body is trying to reject it but the baby is somehow protected and thus the mother is having early and violent morning sickness...
There's also something else to consider: in some media the gestation period of an evil being can be extremely short. The possibility of the evil child being born early and secreted away before the players can acquire any solid information for a scry, locate object, or any other type of divination is real in this situation.
That being said, you could also have physical changes or powers manifest in the mother of the child of prophecy which could create an interesting twist. The mother could take on the appearance and minor powers of a miracle worker, a glow about her and the ability to perform feats well beyond normal. She starts to show powers akin to that of a very high level cleric, however, once the child is born, each miracle ends up creating a thrall from the people the mother had "saved". During the time the child is in the womb it's masked by these manifest powers in such a way that the divination spells would not be able to make out the child.
A prophecy foretells that the next born child of a maiden, we'll call her Karen, is going to bring forth the end of times and will be born as the evilest being the multiverse has ever known.
based on this situation, what spells, abilities, etc. do you think would help a character figure out information about the child before it was born? For example, how would you be able to tell Karen was pregnant early into her term? Obviously the first answer you'd expect is a detect life spell but would a detect good and evil spell work? If you were trying to detect the alignment of a child in the womb, at what point would that alignment become detectable? at conception? A few weeks/months into the term? Since some creatures such as goblins are naturally born evil, at what point does that alignment become evident in the child? If the child was born from a magical being such as a djinn or fiend would detect magic do the trick based on the fact that they have a magical heritage? I've tried to look online for information about whether you can detect the existence of a child in the womb using spells like detect good and evil and other alternatives to just good old fashioned detect life and have found not even a single topic discussing this type of situation. It may be something most campaigns won't come across but in mine specifically something has come up that has me thinking about this (no it is not the above mentioned scenario.) What are your thoughts about this?
I don't think you're going to find a lot of RAW about pregnancy in general.
I'd rule that any Life Cleric could detect a pregnancy. Oddly enough, I'd also rule that a Great Old One Warlock could communicate with a fetus at some stage, maybe even detect it's presence in the first place. Maybe Moon Circle Druids can tell if someone's missed their period :)
As for spell rulings, I'd rule that True Seeing could reveal pregnancy. Locate Animal or Locate Creature should work too. I'd also think about reworking Detect Thoughts, the part about locating thinking beings, and rule that it works with old enough fetuses.
Speaking personally, I'd also rule that Bestow Curse could be used to make someone pregnant :P
Go see a paladin for 5 points of Lay on Hands if you are suddenly feeling unwell for no apparent reason and put an early end to that disease and/or parasitic infestation.
This will fix the issue nicely. If the pregnancy is unwanted it meets definition of a parasite hence disease. The definition
A plant or an animal organism that lives in or on another and takes its nourishment from that other organism.
Now you weirdly find a bunch of christian apolegetics rambling about this issue, but really it's like how poptarts are raviolis, cereal is a stew, and a hotdog is a sandwhich. It is a category thing and it meats the criteria. At least it does depending on definitions.
All parasites are diseases. It is a parasite so paladins lay on hands will clear it up if the mother view it as a symptom and it is unwanted.
You might be asking wait what? why does it matter if it is unwanted. As an example lets look at joint hypermobility or being double jointed. For most people it's just a cool thing to be able to flex farther than other children. Well it is connected to heritable connective tissue disorders. Most of them are where you ligaments slowly break once you hit 50. So you could say that the disease starts showing non harmful symptoms early in childhood and progresses into adulthood. Just to muddy the waters further the treatment for these kind of disease range from regular exercise and checking with your doctor to extensive rounds of medicine daily, sometimes for the same disease in different people.
So a paladin lay on hands ing a ballet dancer with a fever won't mess up her joints A paladin lay on hands ing a happy loved wife who definitely wants the child with a fever only loses the fever. A paladin lay on hands ing the grandmother who can't move her hands would lose the whole set of symptoms. And a paladin lay on hands ing an abused woman who never wanted kids loses the fever and the unwanted pregnancy.
As a note prestidigitation can help prevent this situation with bards. It can clean up any fluids that might cause it with 100% accuracy. Assuming ovulation works for nonhuman races in the same way as humans the spell would definitely be better than condoms and can even be done beforehand on the "target" to prevent any being leftover. Depending on how long you rule implantation to take it can even be effective up to 7 days later.
Go see a paladin for 5 points of Lay on Hands if you are suddenly feeling unwell for no apparent reason and put an early end to that disease and/or parasitic infestation.
This will fix the issue nicely. If the pregnancy is unwanted it meets definition of a parasite hence disease. The definition
A plant or an animal organism that lives in or on another and takes its nourishment from that other organism.
Now you weirdly find a bunch of christian apolegetics rambling about this issue, but really it's like how poptarts are raviolis, cereal is a stew, and a hotdog is a sandwhich. It is a category thing and it meats the criteria. At least it does depending on definitions.
All parasites are diseases. It is a parasite so paladins lay on hands will clear it up if the mother view it as a symptom and it is unwanted.
You might be asking wait what? why does it matter if it is unwanted. As an example lets look at joint hypermobility or being double jointed. For most people it's just a cool thing to be able to flex farther than other children. Well it is connected to heritable connective tissue disorders. Most of them are where you ligaments slowly break once you hit 50. So you could say that the disease starts showing non harmful symptoms early in childhood and progresses into adulthood. Just to muddy the waters further the treatment for these kind of disease range from regular exercise and checking with your doctor to extensive rounds of medicine daily, sometimes for the same disease in different people.
So a paladin lay on hands ing a ballet dancer with a fever won't mess up her joints A paladin lay on hands ing a happy loved wife who definitely wants the child with a fever only loses the fever. A paladin lay on hands ing the grandmother who can't move her hands would lose the whole set of symptoms. And a paladin lay on hands ing an abused woman who never wanted kids loses the fever and the unwanted pregnancy.
As a note prestidigitation can help prevent this situation with bards. It can clean up any fluids that might cause it with 100% accuracy. Assuming ovulation works for nonhuman races in the same way as humans the spell would definitely be better than condoms and can even be done beforehand on the "target" to prevent any being leftover. Depending on how long you rule implantation to take it can even be effective up to 7 days later.
Except for the fact that a parasite, by definition, is of another species than the host. I'm not going to get into any of the rest of what you wrote. Just that you don't have the correct definition of parasite, which hamstrings the rest of the argument.
Thank you all for your comments. You are more than welcome to keep the conversation going but I feel like we've already covered a majority of known options for this. I very much appreciate your cooperation in this conversation!
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So let me give you a scenario:
A prophecy foretells that the next born child of a maiden, we'll call her Karen, is going to bring forth the end of times and will be born as the evilest being the multiverse has ever known.
based on this situation, what spells, abilities, etc. do you think would help a character figure out information about the child before it was born? For example, how would you be able to tell Karen was pregnant early into her term? Obviously the first answer you'd expect is a detect life spell but would a detect good and evil spell work? If you were trying to detect the alignment of a child in the womb, at what point would that alignment become detectable? at conception? A few weeks/months into the term? Since some creatures such as goblins are naturally born evil, at what point does that alignment become evident in the child? If the child was born from a magical being such as a djinn or fiend would detect magic do the trick based on the fact that they have a magical heritage? I've tried to look online for information about whether you can detect the existence of a child in the womb using spells like detect good and evil and other alternatives to just good old fashioned detect life and have found not even a single topic discussing this type of situation. It may be something most campaigns won't come across but in mine specifically something has come up that has me thinking about this (no it is not the above mentioned scenario.) What are your thoughts about this?
Detect Evil and Good doesn't detect evil creatures or people, it detects the presence of aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead creatures. If this child is a genuine Fiend then it would be detected by this or a Paladin's Divine Sense, or any other spell that finds such beings. Otherwise, if you know enough about this unborn child then Locate Creature might work. Beyond that it is time to ask some more powerful being, via something like Commune.
I'm of the opinion that something like this would be more nurture than nature and would not allow detect good and evil to identify the presence of something other than the mother if she was one of the options described in the spell. I might allow detect magic if there was something magical about the baby inherently that was different from the mother. This difference might be the driving force that led the child to the experiences where the child chose to become the evil menace that was prophesied.
Of course, prophecies are sometimes difficult to decipher because of language translations, archaic terms, vague descriptions, or other factors. The Jews thought that the prophesied Messiah would be a great King that would establish Israel as a dominant country, but Christian teachings say that person was Jesus Christ who was born as the son of a carpenter and who claimed his royal heritage after his death (details may be off depending on religion, I'm only using the information as an example). Anakin Skywalker was the Chosen One who was supposed to bring balance to the Force. Whether that was accomplished, and, if so how, is open for debate.
However, I wouldn't be against someone having different ideas about the topic in their story. I could definitely see scenarios where it would be plausible for the situation you discussed could be discerned through detect good and evil, particularly if the mother was somehow a different type than the child. Thus, I would either talk with the DM about what their setting is like, or give it a try in game. After all, if you are curious about it, then it would stand to reason that a character would be as well. Talking to the DM might give you some insight about what exactly the character would know about that situation.
This sounds like it will become a case of self-fufilling prophecy. Players try to stop the child from being born. Their actions cause the mother to seek protection from the players for her child. Evil being tricks mom and causes the baby to become evil.
I like that a lot. Where do I sign up to find out what else happens?
Ah yes, I forgot that's what detect good and evil did, which is sad since I looked it up within the last two weeks.
Scrying might work. The problem is that the child is in total cover and there is no line of sight. That eliminates a lot of spells and effects. Locate spells detect the closest thing you are looking for, so if you are too general the mother will ping and give a false reading.
All good ideas now let's change the scenario a little bit just to have an idea of how a different situation would affect a group's interests or ability to come across this information.
A PC who tends to party often and be sexually active with NPCs (and maybe even occasionally party members) is not careful of their actions and ends up pregnant. The PC is a tiefling and therefore has at least some natural magic in it's blood through the infernal heritage.
at what point would any of the spells discussed be able to detect that child? Seeing as no one in the scenario has any reason to expect it's existence or a reason to be looking for it specifically, what spells could accidentally detect it while they were doing something else and at what point would they be able to?
Go see a paladin for 5 points of Lay on Hands if you are suddenly feeling unwell for no apparent reason and put an early end to that disease and/or parasitic infestation.
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
I think having NPCs commenting to her, perhaps having a god of a non evil alignment and a domain that would be affected by the prophesied evil talk to a cleric/priest (PC or NPC), if you wanted to say that the baby is so evil already that the mother's body is trying to reject it but the baby is somehow protected and thus the mother is having early and violent morning sickness...
There's also something else to consider: in some media the gestation period of an evil being can be extremely short. The possibility of the evil child being born early and secreted away before the players can acquire any solid information for a scry, locate object, or any other type of divination is real in this situation.
That being said, you could also have physical changes or powers manifest in the mother of the child of prophecy which could create an interesting twist. The mother could take on the appearance and minor powers of a miracle worker, a glow about her and the ability to perform feats well beyond normal. She starts to show powers akin to that of a very high level cleric, however, once the child is born, each miracle ends up creating a thrall from the people the mother had "saved". During the time the child is in the womb it's masked by these manifest powers in such a way that the divination spells would not be able to make out the child.
I don't think you're going to find a lot of RAW about pregnancy in general.
I'd rule that any Life Cleric could detect a pregnancy. Oddly enough, I'd also rule that a Great Old One Warlock could communicate with a fetus at some stage, maybe even detect it's presence in the first place. Maybe Moon Circle Druids can tell if someone's missed their period :)
As for spell rulings, I'd rule that True Seeing could reveal pregnancy. Locate Animal or Locate Creature should work too. I'd also think about reworking Detect Thoughts, the part about locating thinking beings, and rule that it works with old enough fetuses.
Speaking personally, I'd also rule that Bestow Curse could be used to make someone pregnant :P
Looking for new subclasses, spells, magic items, feats, and races? Opinions welcome :)
This will fix the issue nicely. If the pregnancy is unwanted it meets definition of a parasite hence disease. The definition
A plant or an animal organism that lives in or on another and takes its nourishment from that other organism.
Now you weirdly find a bunch of christian apolegetics rambling about this issue, but really it's like how poptarts are raviolis, cereal is a stew, and a hotdog is a sandwhich. It is a category thing and it meats the criteria. At least it does depending on definitions.
All parasites are diseases. It is a parasite so paladins lay on hands will clear it up if the mother view it as a symptom and it is unwanted.
You might be asking wait what? why does it matter if it is unwanted. As an example lets look at joint hypermobility or being double jointed. For most people it's just a cool thing to be able to flex farther than other children. Well it is connected to heritable connective tissue disorders. Most of them are where you ligaments slowly break once you hit 50. So you could say that the disease starts showing non harmful symptoms early in childhood and progresses into adulthood. Just to muddy the waters further the treatment for these kind of disease range from regular exercise and checking with your doctor to extensive rounds of medicine daily, sometimes for the same disease in different people.
So a paladin lay on hands ing a ballet dancer with a fever won't mess up her joints A paladin lay on hands ing a happy loved wife who definitely wants the child with a fever only loses the fever. A paladin lay on hands ing the grandmother who can't move her hands would lose the whole set of symptoms. And a paladin lay on hands ing an abused woman who never wanted kids loses the fever and the unwanted pregnancy.
As a note prestidigitation can help prevent this situation with bards. It can clean up any fluids that might cause it with 100% accuracy. Assuming ovulation works for nonhuman races in the same way as humans the spell would definitely be better than condoms and can even be done beforehand on the "target" to prevent any being leftover. Depending on how long you rule implantation to take it can even be effective up to 7 days later.
Except for the fact that a parasite, by definition, is of another species than the host. I'm not going to get into any of the rest of what you wrote. Just that you don't have the correct definition of parasite, which hamstrings the rest of the argument.
Looking for new subclasses, spells, magic items, feats, and races? Opinions welcome :)
Thank you all for your comments. You are more than welcome to keep the conversation going but I feel like we've already covered a majority of known options for this. I very much appreciate your cooperation in this conversation!