FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1082592277[/unixtime]]
relative to the entity whose free will is being questioned. The ant in the maze doesn't have free will because the operator of the maze dictates their every action.
Sure he does. He can choose to explore the maze or not to, turn left or turn right.
The man on the street does have free will because there are no gods or scientists looking at his every move and altering his landscape at whim to coerce him into action.
He has more options but he doesn't have any more free will.
Free will has nothing to do with the number of choices you have, it is merely the ability to make a choice. Even if your choices are death by hanging or death by electrocution, that's still a choice and you still have free will. So long as you can make a choice if it is presented to you, you've got free will.
The only way to lose free will is through the use of dominate spells, or when you don't have it to begin with like when you're a golem or simulacrum.
Merely limiting the number of choices someone has in no way removes their free will.
Nature is ambivalent. You can draw power from it, but it doesn't care. You can make a hydroelectric plant, and draw power from Nature, and Nature won't care. You can leave that potential energy difference in big piles - and Nature still won't care.
Eh... you're mixing science and magic again. in the real world, "Nature" is merely a concept that has to do with stuff that's not technological or man made. It can't really care because it has no mind.. This also means it can't grant spells.
When you talk in terms of D&D, nature does have an agenda, and that's to support nature. Druids lose their power if they no longer revere nature, and if nature can actively revoke their powers, then it must have some mind and some agenda. Nature basically seeks to maintain natural things. Someone burning a forest and replacing it with a city is acting against nature because they're destroying part of the natural world. Nature is essentially anti-civilization.
The Power of Good may be able to allow you to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune - but you can stare at a rock all day and the force Good has on that rock is exactly zero. Without a moral agent involved, there is no Good, and it is thusly powerless.
If it is powerless how does it grant someone power? Who are you communing with when you cast commune as a cleric of "good"? How much does the force of good actually know, if anything?