D&D 5E - Spirit Guardians - Thematic Question
Describing spell damage in terms of "positive" and "negative" energy is very old-fashioned...it reminds me of the earlier editions of the game (like the Negative Energy Plane of 3rd Edition, or the Spheres of Influence of BECM). And there's nothing wrong with that; I've used the old-school cosmologies and rules for years and years.But my new campaign uses a different cosmology and doesn't have these places, so I had to get creative.
Nowadays, I describe radiant energy as "radiation" -- the kind of energy you get from ultraviolet light and nuclear blasts. It's hard for me to think of it as "the cleansing power of sunshine and goodness" when I'm using it to mow down a group of lizardfolk during a home invasion. It's just another type of energy--it doesn't really have an alignment. The sorcerer is blasting the area with thermal energy, the fighter and monk are demonstrating the destructive power of kinetic energy, and Tiamat is a bar of plutonium in the room
And I describe necrotic energy as "entropy," the removal of energy. It's not an "evil death sauce" that my cleric pours all over the place, it's more like a grounding rod that pulls energy out of a living creature...body heat, synaptic energy, metabolism processes, all of those biochemical reactions get shorted out or grounded. It's not a type of energy--it's the absence of energy, which doesn't really have an alignment either.
Not sure if that helps, but it's working for me so far.
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