Planar Renovation Project: The Positive Energy Plane

Based on prior elemental renovations, I suppose we should start with ideas associated with the element (e.g. fire = passion, fury, etc.)
So we have Positive which would associate with healing, health, pleasure, happiness, euphoria, and goodness (This isn't meant to be exhaustive or to imply that all these have to be tied to the Poz - I'm just brainstorming)

Then the next step is to see how to make this different than the similar Outer Plane (in this case, Elysium)
This is where I start having problems. Most of the ideas that occur to me have already been done on the Outer Plane.
Goodness, happiness and an addictive euphoria have already been covered and so should probably NOT be defining themes of the Poz. I know healing has been tied to Elysium too but I feel that the Poz could still lay claim to it.
So that only leaves healing and maybe pleasure (maybe there are some Sensates or others that have become addicted to the rush of positive energy so they go out get injured just so they can rush back to feel the surge of positive energy)

Then we have to think of a native society that is built around these concepts. Again, I find this difficult. Aside from a giant infirmary, I have trouble thinking of things for the natives to do.
I guess in a parallel to the dark plans of the Neg, there could be groups or agents plotting to sweep the Prime (or other planes) with waves of positive energy. Perhaps these beings have dreams of cleansing the multiverse with the Positive and building a new "pure" structure to the multiverse. They could hide their plans under the guise of compassion healers. In fact, they might be compassionate but just with an unfortunate attitude of "having to break a few bad eggs [like the current multiverse] to make a good omlette"

It's not much and I'm not enthusiastic about it but that's all I can think of at the moment

Doesn't necessarily need a reason we could understand.

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

So you get these beings that consume positive energy and generate it personally, because the PEP can be negentropic like that. And there's this whole stagnant universe out there, including lots of pseudo lifeforms that aren't real life-forms, you know, because they don't have souls like ours, their bodies are mortal while we can grow bits of ourselves to send off-plane while we stay here, undying in the Life Well. But don't worry, as the only plane capable of growing on its own, without consuming energy or belief from other planes, the PEP is clearly destined to take over and become the entire Multiverse.

So they send out colonies of their people. They're very pleasant, to start with. One shows up in an area and there's a refreshing air to him. A few more show up and the plants get healthier. A few more show up and there are bumper crops and big litters. A few more show up and there's so much in the storage bins and the shops that the rats and flies start getting to it, but hey, they're living things too, right? And a few more show up and people haven't yet asked where they're coming from, but the forest is getting undergrown again, and why is there greenery sprouting in the timbers of my house, and have you noticed that the lake's been getting a lot of algae recently, I thought we were keeping that clean, and did you hear about poor Mira with that nasty fungal infection, really, Blin is sick too, you'd think there would be fewer diseases around, it was such a good year for the crops.

And if it goes on long enough, there will be a world-sized arboretum, and then a city-sized flower, and the portal opens wide, and there is a flash of energy, and the world becomes purified and part of the Positive.

Just a thought.

One thing to consider, the remove disease spell is a healing spell (in 3rd edition). So it can be used to wipe out agents of disease. This could have two explanations:
1) positive energy can be used selectively as a weapon, perhaps by boosting resistance to parasites and disease. Or perhaps it acts like a precision laser, only doing the positive energy atomization thing to the disease-causing agents. Imagine if you could channel this into an positive energy bomb, of sorts?
2) Certain decay-causing agents, like viruses, are not really "alive" as we know it, but rather are negative-energy fueled mockeries of life.

Following #2, a theme of the positive energy plane might be to wipe out such taints on the material world, taints such as disease, poison, illusions/untruths, or other corruptions, along with negative energy. The Lumi, a LN race of corporeal positive energy outsiders in the 3.5 MMIII, exemplify this theme of "purity" above everything else.

Another thing on material artifice and fabrication, these would not necessarily be a theme of the positive energy plane. Cure spells usually don't affect constructs/objects as well as they do living creatures. It's entirely possible that some of the purification positive energy enthusiasts would see such things as mockeries, to be wiped out along with the other taints.

Of course, the positive energy plane could represent euphoria or positive feelings. A more negative connotation could exist within here too- too much of it and one can lose all individuality. The explosion caused by too much positive energy might not be "death" per say, but rather just the death of the individual form. The character’s consciousness gets blown apart and then absorbed into the greater essence of the plane itself, able to live on forever in kind of a planar chorus of ecstasy.

This could be an environmental obstacle for planewalkers in the Positive. If they don't keep control of their fears or their imaginations (say, a Will roll when under various stresses), their imaginations latch on to a passing whiff of positive energy and create a lifeform that echoes their current thoughts. (And no, they can't do it deliberately and with any sort of detailed control, without powerful magic.) If it happened because they were afraid, the entity will probably be in a position to either add to that fear, or attack the source, probably at random.

* Speaking of fear, I also recall that one of the things Necromantic spells do is cause various fear states, so it seems that negative energy is associated with fear. Therefore positive might be associated with its opposite -- in D&D, morale, which is part of the spells that counter and cancel fear effects. This might suggest something involving confidence and bravery, even to the point of foolhardiness, as a theme.

* Finally, concerning the creation of lifeforms, we know from the description in The Inner Planes that powerful mages do come here to work on new lifeforms, those advanced a step beyond golems and such. This strongly suggests possible sites for exploration: planeside workshops of mages who are known to have been working on such projects, but have died or vanished, possibly leaving behind valuable materials proteected against the plane, or notes on working on such lifeforms. Also, the lifeforms they were working on might be there in incomplete form.

For a larger background element, there might be a small but powerful order of mages dedicated to learning about the details of such creations, including their dangers and powers. A good-aligned or lawful-aligned organization with such interests would almost certainly be deeply concerned about establishing ethical rules for its members, and would probably send out specialists when it appeared that new lifeforms were being put to disturbing uses, both to investigate and to possibly assist in any required responses. A generally neutral organization might simply have some interest in maintaining a guild monopoly on the art, as well as projecting an image of usefulness to knowledgeable rulers who might some day want to employ them, either to create or to counter such creations. Excellent source for NPCs and plot hooks, or a background for a character. The Order of Clotho, perhaps?

I wrote up a prestige class on the gleemax forums a while ago which describes a wizard interested in positive energy. One of the things I did for the project was to look for those Sorcerer/Wizard spells in the Spell Compendium described as involving positive energy; there are very few, though Disrupt Undead is one (and Level 0!) and Symbul's Synostodweomer is described as using it. I would suggest, among SRD spells, that clone, animate object, and undeath to death are good candidates for wizardly spells that use positive energy. Spells that thematically seem to employ positive energy would be those involving radiance, steam, and mineral -- lightning already being the energetic form of air, alas.

Though perhaps lightning evokers are employing positive energy in a crude way... in fact, my current PC is a Guvner who elaborated on exactly that, producing a Bioelectricity loophole that allows him to heal a living being by re-establishing the pattern of biological electricity that is supposed to define it. (Alternatively, one might allow a student of positive energy to be able to read this pattern very precisely, being able to learn things like magical influence that is affecting a being.)

Bards, you know, can cast cure spells arcanely, something that must differ from the standard approach of wizards and which a wizard interested in positive energy would surely be trying to decipher. Here's the passage from the ficlet in which my Guvner discussed this problem with a skilled bard:

----------------------------

She pulled the cord that rang for a servant, and ordered breakfast. "In bed," she commanded, "you've a lot of recovering to do yet."

He submitted meekly. "Yes, Grandmother." As he ate, she put out her hand and called softly to her favorite harp: "Pinna, Pinna... come to me, thattagirl." It appeared in her hands obediently, a feathery work of art with a lush, blended tone. Rehael remembered the spell with a familiar twist of the eyebrows. She'd researched it herself -- composed it, she called it, as it was for bards to summon particular instruments from nearby rather than the generic one the usual spell gave them.

Simple as that spell was, he'd never mastered it, despite her attempts at teaching him. It was magic, to be sure, it felt like magic, it wasn't a channeling of divine energies, but somehow it worked completely differently from the rigorous memorization and rules of the spells he'd finally learned to cast, realizing at last something the awkward young half-citizen had a talent for.

She caught his gaze. "What?"

"Nothing... no. Try answering the question for me again. I've learned more about magic since I left. Maybe I'll get it this time. How do you do that? It would take me a complicated setup with a dimension door and an arcane beacon to pull an object like that to me. And you... wherever it is, it just comes to you. All of your musical arcana are like that. How does it work?"

She said nothing for a while, playing thoughtfully. Finally, she said, "Her name is Pinna, you know. It means Feather. The music, the magic... it's the same thing. It's about making a connection. I like her; if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to call her. The spell just expresses that longing." She looked up. "Make any sense?"

"Emotion is energy," he said, "an unresolved tension. The magic opens a channel for the tension to resolve. The energy discharges, and the universe enters a lower-energy stable state with the longing fulfilled." She looked at him quizzically. "...I know. That didn't make complete sense to me either."

"Perhaps halfway between making sense to either of us is something right," she said, and went back to playing.

He listened for a while. "What about healing wounds?"

"What about it?"

"Wizards have never been able to figure out how to do it. It's too complicated. Priests just throw the problem to the god and let him worry about shaping the details."

"No, that's not right. The priest does it a little like a bard does," she said. "He feels for the soul. The soul knows what shape it's supposed to be. He lets the light flow in, and the patient does the shaping. Bards cure by reaching out to their patient and feeling their wounds as our own, and singing of the reflex to heal and grow that's in all living things. It inspires the patient."

"That's positive energy. We can handle negative..." that plucking of a dissonant note on the harp was no accident, she was too good for that; she was expressing displeasure. "...but positive is as complicated as living things themselves. Opaque to me. Best I've ever been able to do is chuck a little of it at some..." he trailed off, not wanting to talk about undead right now.

"You handle the True Light all the time, though, don't you? That's what lightning is. The Light in the form of air."

"Sure, by taking ground-state air and pushing bits of it apart into oppositely-charged regions that promptly rebalance. The positive energy's really the original hammer and wedge that splits up the substance; it's the charged air rushing back together that does the damage. Most people don't know that."

"So it's still a crude use."

"Yes."

"You couldn't let your target shape it?"

"No more than you could get somewhere by setting off without knowing the way there."

A soft laugh [his grandfather, arriving]. "That's how I met her, grandson."

--------------------

It just so happens that during a campaign I wrapped up about a year ago, the PCs were required to travel to the Pos for a retrieval mission. Like you, I found very little source material and had to cobble together whatever I could on short notice.

It started out innocently enough - random bursts of life magic occasionally animating pieces of their gear - the ranger's bowstring uncoiling and trying to constrict him (not that it could kill him, but mainly as an annoyance). Also there was a moment of panic as the wizard's spellbook animated and managed to fly away a considerable distance before it was noticed to be missing.

A little later on the party was intercepted by a roving warband of Lumi. I don't know how extensive their civilization is, but I had them set up in a "protector of the purity of the plane" capacity - wherein they will get in the faces of any non-natives to make sure they aren't there for mischief. I sort of saw them as zealots who will go to any length to protect the sanctity of this plane.

The PCs final destination was in a mind-bogglingly enormous crystalline edifice I modified from the Bastion of Souls adventure. After fighting some token golem-like guardians (lifted stats and appearance from gem dragons: crystal) the PCs were able to do something very few mortals have - penetrate into a Soul Forge.

Once inside they were awed by row after row of crystal trees - with the omnipresent tinkle of chimes in the background. After wandering these groves for some time, they came across an elderly female caretaker of indeterminate race. After chatting with her awhile, and assuming her to be nothing more than some being tasked with the maintenance of the grove, I totally threw them for a loop by having her reach out, pluck a soul "fruit" from a tree, and consume it right there in front of them - they were positively (pun intended) aghast!

It turned out she is a planar travelling vampiress who wanted to accelerate her rise in power. Being too impatient to slowly become greater over the course of several decades or even centuries - she theorized that by increasing the quality of what she consumed, she could speed up the process - much like a Barghest feasting on kings and wizards and knights rather than a simpler fare of peasants will ascend faster.

So, utilizing massive amounts of Positive Plane protection spells - she infiltrated a Bastion to feast on souls in their most primal and undiluted form. Now that she's supped on this fare - she simply will not drink a mortal's blood. She now feels the act of "living" spoils the food - even in a newborn babe, the act of simply being born is a taint she cannot abide. Only by consuming souls directly at their source before they cross that threshold can she be sure to get the highest grade. It was quite a shock for my players to have to do battle with a vampire in the Positive Plane - pretty much the last thing they would expect and be prepared for.

I was intrigued by this character concept and actually ended up making her a major recurring villain in my campaign. I gave her an elaborate backstory of being a former priestess of Lathander before contracting vampirism - and she delights in pretending she is still a creature of the light. I even went so far as to equip her with alchemical "sun burst" pellets she can throw at her feet to mimic a False Dawn spell - but minus the positive energy so she takes no damage and isn't blinded.

She has enthralled the local Lumi around her Bastion, and they have taken to revering her as a semi-divine creature called Lady Aurora - the Dawn Mistress. She uses them to patrol for potential threats and weaken any foes that may strive to oust her from her sanctum inside the Soul Forge.

Ok that probably wasn't at all helpful to this thread - just thought I'd have fun taking a trip down memory lane.

""There should really be an opposed magic school to necromancy which focuses on this. ... which for the moment I'm going to call 'vitamancy' ...""

Biomancy sounds better IMO, even though it would invoke the image of a 2E necromancer with healing spells and without the ability to affect the undead. In 2E and 1E, there were some Greyhawk-setting spells that tapped the Positive. Most of them were devised by Nystul, IIRC.
Lemee look them up in the Wizard's Spell Compendiums...

Bane of the Bedeviled (FR spell)
Nystul's Blazing Beam
Nystul's Lightburst

That seems to be it, though.

""Bards, you know, can cast cure spells arcanely, something that must differ from the standard approach of wizards and which a wizard interested in positive energy would surely be trying to decipher.""

Going by both 2E and 3E spells, wizards seem to be limited to healing via manipulating the positive energy in their own and a recipient's or victim's body rather than channel it from the Positive Energy Plane to infuse the subject. Lifebolt from Magic of Faerun IIRC uses the same principle since (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm going by memory here) the spell creates a bolt of positive energy which is drawn out of the wizard's body.
Also, while bardic spells are indeed arcane magic, they have even less in common with wizardly/sorceror magic than clerical spells have to druid spells.

""Also, this from The Inner Planes: 'Many graybeards speculate that creatures annihilated in this fashion are actually elevated to a new status of being'.""
In all likelihood their essence becomes merged with the plane, much like a petitioner's or evil person's (in the case of the being who becomes a chraal) eventually would.

""So, in the first case we have ... well, I'm not really sure. An empty shell? Or something newborn? The positive is the source of souls, after all, so that seems equally possible. Perhaps the soul is even more 'pure' than normal methods of creating life allows for (which isn't the same thing as 'good'). What that translates to exactly, I'm not sure, but it sounds sinister.""
Again, in all likelihood a soul lost to the Positive becomes a part of its essence much in the same way that an outsider killed on its home plane or a non-worshipping/non-supplicating practitioner would. New beings would be created from said essence, but this DOES NOT entail reincarnation. The essences of many lifeforms (and petitioners in the case of the Outer Planes) are merged with the pre-existing essence of said plane to form something new.

""OTOH, I can't actually find anything that says this about getting the souls back, so I might just have imagined it.""
Which goes with what I proposed about "being lost to the plane". The victim's essence merges with the plane itself, meaning that the soul cannot be recovered any more than a slain outsider/elemental (which instantaneously merges with its home plane or rarely, deity immediately upon death rather than undergoing purification as a petitioner-- this is because outsiders and elementals are already purified, unlike mortals), or a petitioner who has fully merged with his/her/its deity or afterlife plane. Though IIRC it's even easier to resurrect an outsider or elemental than it is to resurrect a merged petitioner (I think this was done primarily dor game balance/playability, though. The player might just love his mephit cohort or familiar so much that he wants him resurrected, whereas if a mortal has merged with its deity or plane, it's likely already been dead for quite some time already, likely for decades if not centuries.)

""I'm fairly sure this has already been done in the border between the Positive and Radiance.""
There's also The Hospice in the 3E Manual of the Planes.

VikingLegion, I like a lot of the things you created (or lifted).

I was going to question that if the undead lady had Positive Plane Protection, how would she be able to feed off of the positive energy from the "fruit".
But then I realized that I had never questioned if PCs with Airy Water or some similar spell might die of thirst, even if on the Elemental Plane of Water. (As an aside, if some Guvner can point out how this loophole works, I'd be oblidged)

""Weapons/armor/items exposed to the PozEn might well gain power against undeath, acquire the ability to heal or even resurrect. No doubt there would be people strongly interested in creating such things.""
Animating fields are listed as a hazard in the 3E Manual of the Planes (e.g. your equipment becomes an animated object)

""People don't merely try to create life in the plane, they create entire worlds - whole planets given life and grown at vastly accelerated rates. These World Forgers design worlds of all types before releasing them into the multiverse where it is expected they will be carried along by other forces to their fated location.""

That's not possible since worlds are created through protomatter in the Ethereal combined with elements. You can't create a world (prime or otherwise) out of Positive Energy alone, since it's merely the SPARK of life, or the vital force. Likewise you are correct that thoughtforms would need to be created on the Astral.
It breaks down like this:

Astral Plane: belief, memory, thought. Womb and graveyard of the gods (to be certain, the vast majority of powers were not born from belief on the Astral, but rather are ascended mortals or outsiders. The first powers however were quite clearly born as belief given sentience)
Elemental Planes: matter and energy
Ethereal Plane: possibility, potential, creation
Outer Planes: alignment, belief, afterlife
Positive/Negative Planes: life and death, respectively. Positive is also where souls are created.

The planes were, as far as I can tell, created (came into being) in this order: Ethereal, Elemental, Astral, Prime, Outer. (Though Prime may have been created before Astral, or they may have been created at the same time)
At least one canonical book tries to claim that the Elemental planes existed first (and I've heard that many fans agree with this), but such is impossible since the Ethereal IS potential and possibility, not to mention that the elemental planes could not possibly create the Ethereal (which itself, including raw protomatter, does not consist of elements), since in the Ethereal, elemental forces are muted.

Well a vampire (or many undead types I suppose) must have some means of converting positive energy into something that fuels them. If positive and negative energy are anathema towards each other, how does a vamp drink a cutter's blood and somehow process that into a product that can sustain themselves?

I guess I just didn't worry too much about the mechanics of it. I just gave her a crap-ton of items/spells that confer Positive Energy protection so she can exist there unhindered (including a really fancy custom built casket she can retreat to if all of her personal protection is stripped off).

I also very much played up her snobbish, elitist personality. She simply refuses to drink blood anymore - considering that something only a low-class vampire scum would do. If you're going to steal someone's "essence", why not get it straight at its untainted source?

I like the idea of a prison for a powerful undead creature in the PEP. Would be an interesting encounter!

The prestige class I wrote up was called an energomancer, vitamancer, or student of yang. It was basically Wiz, advancing all the HD, BAB, saves, weapon/armor, skills, etc. as per standard wizard. You lost the extra metamagic feat and didn't advance spellcasting at levels 1, 5, or 9, advancing at all the others. The requirements were:

Skills: Spellcraft 13 ranks, Knowledge (arcana) 5 ranks
Spells: Ability to cast Disrupt Undead and Daylight as arcane spells.

Discussion on the gleemax forums suggested that the audience strongly wanted to avoid making the wizard a healer, so I avoided direct healing abilities, though these are an obvious candidate. The capstone transformation at level 10 provided a number of yoga-like abilities, instead of making one immortal, again after audience input.

(Basically, the question was posed as to why spellcasters seeking immortality turn to the plane of death and become liches, instead of developing a PEP solution, and the proposed reasoning was that 'yin is enduring, while yang is explosive,' i.e. necessarily temporary. However, I've since wondered if perhaps there was a different unpleasant side effect, namely that you have a tendency to regenerate to double HP and explode, but can contain it by, oh, slamming yourself with a good hard sunburst or polar ray (or sword cut) or the like every day. Bit of a disincentive, that.)

At any rate, the feats in the PrC were:

1st Elemental purification
2nd Animated object familiar +1 level of existing spellcasting class
3rd Energy weapon +1 level of existing spellcasting class
4th Counterspelling +1 level of existing spellcasting class
5th
6th Energy burst weapon +1 level of existing spellcasting class
7th Clone familiar +1 level of existing spellcasting class
8th +1 level of existing spellcasting class
9th Plane shift
10th Energy surge abilities +1 level of existing spellcasting class

(Instead of leaving Level 5 empty, now that I know about it, I might give it the ability to cast positive protection 1/day per 3 energomancer levels as a spell-like.)

Elemental Purification: You can purify and enhance the elements present in your other spells by imbuing them with the energy of first creation.

When you cast a spell with the Acid descriptor, or a spell of the Conjuration (Creation) subschool with the Earth descriptor, you may elect that the material involved manifest as shards of mineral (possibly very tiny ones, in the case of acid fog. If the spell deals damage, this adds the slashing type to the damage. If the spell creates lasting stone, it can create any inexpensive type of stone or metal you might have a use for; at the GM's discretion, you may be able to create more valuable stone or metal at a cost of 1 XP per gp of material thus created.

When you cast a spell with the Cold descriptor, you may elect to have thick wafts of mist and steam accompany the spell's area of effect or point of impact. Treat this as a Fog Cloud spell affecting only squares through which the cold spell passes.

When you cast a spell with the Electricity descriptor, you may elect to accompany the arcs of lightning with violent buffets of wind. Treat this as a Gust of Wind spell that affects only the targets of the lightning.

When you cast a spell with the Fire descriptor, you may elect to have the flames sparkle with intense radiance. This may blind creatures who see it (Fort save negates).

Animated Object Familiar: You may sacrifice an unused spell slot of 6th level or higher for the day to endow an object with life force. Treat this as a spontaneous casting of the spell Animate Objects, as if it were on your class list. If you could otherwise gain a new familiar, you may choose to make this effect permanent. This takes the usual 24 hours and uses up magical materials that cost 100gp, plus the cost of the underlying object, plus 1000gp times (anything from 1 up to (5 + one-half your caster level, rounded up)). Use the base statistics for any animated object, with the following exceptions; you can animate an object whose size grants it HD up to your caster level.

Like guardian familiars or other construct familiars, an animated object familiar lacks a familiar's usual improved evasion ability and doesn't confer Alertness on its master. Unlike most construct familiars, however, a familiar animated with this ability is instilled with a rudimentary awareness. It has an Int score equal to the additional multiple of 1000gp added to the creation cost, and can use skills. It loses the typical construct immunity to mind-affecting effects. It has a familiar's typical empathic link, though it has no emotions. If it has Int 8 or better, it can speak to you telepathically within 100 ft (Su).

Energy weapon: With a touch, you can cause a manufactured weapon (or one head of a double weapon) to channel positive energy with each strike. Against undead creatures, this adds 1d6 damage to a blow; against living creatures, this subtracts 1d6 damage from a blow, possibly for net healing. Against creatures that are neither healed nor harmed by positive energy, there is no additional effect. The weapon retains this ability for a number of rounds equal to your caster level; missile weapons so enhanced bestow the positive energy effect on their ammunition. You may use this ability a number of times per day equal to your energomancer level divided by 3, rounded down.

Counterspelling: You may counterspell spells with the Shadow or Darkness descriptor using spells with the Light descriptor, as if these were of the appropriate school for the Improved Counterspell feat. You may counterspell necromantic spells your DM declares use negative energy with those of the appropriate level using positive energy, including Animate Object cast spontaneously as described above. (Many energomancers research high-level spells that employ positive energy, for their own sake as well as utility for use with this ability.)

Energy burst weapon: When you make a weapon an energy weapon, you can make it an energy burst weapon. The weapon becomes capable of making critical hits on creatures powered by negative energy, including undead creatures; when it makes any critical hit, it inflicts an additional 1d10 points of positive energy damage (2d10 if the weapon's critical multiplier is x3, 3d10 if the multiplier is x4). Resolve criticals normally (including immunity to critical hits) against living beings; this ability then subtracts from the damage done by the weapon, possibly for net healing. Against creatures that are neither healed nor harmed by positive energy, there is no additional effect. This ability is separate from your energy weapon ability, includes its effects, and does not stack. The weapon retains this ability for a number of rounds equal to your caster level; missile weapons so enhanced bestow the positive energy effect on their ammunition.

Clone familiar: When you could otherwise gain a new familiar, and if you have a clone of yourself fully prepared, you can awaken the clone as your familiar. This takes the usual familiar-binding costs to begin with, and the clone's intelligence is limited to what your caster levels can provide. However, the clone is a fully intelligent being, and portions of your memory are imprinted in its brain: with 1 week and 1000gp of materials per level, the clone can recall class levels you have earned that do not require external events such as tattoos, pacts, or other objects. The clone can recall up to one-half your class levels, in any order for which it qualifies. (The ethics of maintaining metaphysical control over an intelligent being are up to the energomancer. If the clone familiar is freed, at no penalty to the energomancer, it can gain its own class levels and can become a significant ally on its own.)

Plane shift: At 9th level, an energomancer gains the ability to plane shift, as a spell-like ability, to the Positive Energy Plane and back to his starting point. Each direction of travel can be used once per day. If the energomancer took any 'riders' on the first trip, those people also return with him. The intervening stay can be no longer in rounds than his energomancer level, but he can choose to make the stay shorter or forego the return trip entirely. If the energomancer has never been to the Positive Energy Plane before (though by this point in their career, most have been), the destination point is random; otherwise, he goes where he last was.

Energy surge abilities: While many energomancers dream of infusing themselves with the limitless life found in the Wellspring of the Universe, the simple fact is that a human body cannot handle this sort of energy for long. There is a reason that undeath is one of the few methods known of extending corporeal existence. However, an intensely devoted energomancer learns how to briefly open wide the gates of positive energy that drive his own life to strengthen his energies. Making a Concentrate check, the energomancer can achieve the following effects as a supernatural ability:

DC 15 (1 round): move from exhausted to fatigued, or from fatigued to nonfatigued.
DC 15 (1 round): shake off any fear status imposed by a Necromancy spell.
DC 20 + # of negative levels (1 hour): shake off negative levels with no remaining ill effect.
DC 20 + # of points of drain (1 hour): shake off drained ability levels with no remaining ill effect.
DC 30 + # of points of total loss (8 hours): restore 1 point of ability loss.

""Rather, I think if you do want to associate it with an alignment concept, it should be that Positive is associated with law - in the sense of taking something unordered and random and creating something more orderly out of it, bringing about life, reducing entropy - while Negative is associated with chaos - in the sense of increasing entropy, creating disorder out of order, etc.""

I disagree that positive or negative should be associated with law or chaos. This is in part because you could just as easily claim that entropy is lawful (everything is homogenized), whereas positive is chaotic (due to how energetic and vibrant said beings, and positive energy in general, is.)

True, that's why I said "if you do". Neutrality is just as good an option, I think. My main point was just I think we should outright try and avoid the implicit association Positive usually has with good and Negative with evil in any number of resources (despite explicit comments to the contrary).

Cancer-like imperial/expansionists like those described above, which infect and absorb other planes like Primes, do come to mind first.

A race whose motivation and reason for existence is the destruction of the Negative Energy Plane, which they believe will bring about multiversal utopia free of pain, fear, and death. They might be right, but whatever they manage to achieve would be an utterly unpredictable universal setup which would quite possibly not be able to support mortal life as we know it.

A race of tempters. Eternally vibrant, youthful and beautiful, able to change into any mortal form, their true form a sparkling crystal of white light, stocked well with fast healing, regneration, and resistances to spells of disease, poison, and death. Able to produce all manner of goods, including food and drink, and the positive quasielemental materials of gems and precious metals, healing potions, and spells of radiance (evocation and illusion) and lightning (higher-HD members able to produe more). They have learned that mortal value what they can provide, and use their abilities to pay for power and influence in mortal worlds. (They keep their promises, since it doesn't cost them anything.) What they seek is what they can't create: life, especially intelligent life. They rank themselves by the spheres of influence they acquire among mortals, and they seek the challenge and skill of manipulating people, as many as possible, with games, lies, and illusions. It's all for entertainment, one might say, or science, another -- what better challenge to pass eternity than understanding (and excercising control over) the intricate byways of the soul?

As much as I disliked the race in Star Wars, you could do something like the Yuzong Vong, but take it a step further. A race that believes anything man made is the hand of entropy at work and thus must be cleansed in purifying,radiant light. They destroy cities, nations, even entire worlds - wiping them clean of artificial constructions and returning them to a purer - more natural - form of life. They care for nothing but the destruction of entropy - amusing as that concept is - and will let nothing stand in their way. They have been known to wipe out entire civilizations in order to gain the advantage in the war between growth and entropy.

Alternately, they go the opposite way. They group believes in growth above anything else. They push growth of every sort - they roll over anything that attempts to stand in the way of progress, of the spread of energy, life and the idea of growth. A group of native elves are trying to stop the burning of their forests to make room for a strip mall? Wipe them out - their loss is insignificant in the face of progress - of the eternal growth - for in the long term the loss of that forest will make way for homes, living spaces, skyscrapers, vast towering shopping centers and more ... progress is the natural order of all things and moving forward, not backward, is the ultimate goal of the multiverse.

I like this.

This too.

I'll just leave this here.
Edit: Also this: http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/Book_of_Elements_(3.5e_Sourcebook)/High_Adventure_on_the_Inner_Planes#High_Adventure_in_._._._The_Positive_Energy_Plane.21
(apparently the forum can't handle this as a link properly).
http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/Book_of_Elements_(3.5e_Sourcebook)/Environments_of_the_Inner_Planes#Positive_Energy_Plane
Second part of the above

I remember in Book of Exalted Deeds there were anti-undead known as the deathless. They are people who expanded their lifespans with positive energy.

Only problem with that is that the deathless are vulnerable to positive energy "damage" just like 'nilla undead (at least in Eberron they are, anyway).

The Deathless subtype is actually based off of "living saints" in Buddhist mythology, which states that some Bodhisvattas never leave their dead, decaying bodies, but instead remain in them in order to protect temples and the like (Bodhisvattas are buddhist saints who willingly postpone Nirvana in order to, either beyond the grave or by remaining within Samsara, the endless wheel/cycle of death and rebirth, until they have aided all beings in achieving enlightenment. As 'living saints', they willingly remain trapped in a dead, inanimate corpse, from which they continue to project spiritual power and fight evil beings spiritually, though they are capable of movement in emergency situations. I do not recall the time nor place, but there is one infamous example of such a 'living saint' where the temple caught ablaze. Several of the monks claimed that they were only able to escape from the immolated building because the saint warded them against the fire. According to the legend, the fire had completely surrounded the saint's body, and was so hot that the metal objects just inches from the body melted, yet the saint's body wasn't even singed. The legend also claims that the body was originally posed in the Sitting Lotus position, but during the fire, it crossed its arms across its chest, and that the saint has remained in this position ever since.)

True. Although the Deathless aren't a 100% new concept to D&D. You had the "Good Lich" in 2E (can't remember the exact name for them, but they were generally elves)
And yeah, I find that idea stupid as well. I miss the "non-good" category from 1 and 2E.

The thing is about the Positive Energy Plane is that to renovate it, we need to make at least one class, a ton of new monsters, and several adventures. Now I realise that we are essentially making a fan-sourcebook.

I don't see why that's necessary. If you look over our other PRP threads that wasn't done in any of them, and yet we've come to a basic consensus that we like how things have turned out.

I think Arcadia was played through to completion. I felt good work was done on Ooze and Bytopia, too, but maybe we just have different ideas on what needs to go into renovation.

You are correct. Arcadia was the first one, IIRC, and it was very thoroughly done. Bytopia was the second and also got good treatment.

I have a couple ideas for Positive but I need to get to sleep so I'll post them tomorrow after homework is done.

As far as I ever understood things, the project was only aimed at a thematic revision/expansion, not a mechanical one. To that end, the revision for Arcadia achieved such.