Playing lawful neutral without straying too far into lawful good or lawful evil?

[Zhentarim]

How would one play a lawful neutral cleric of Abadar player who occasionally creates undead from say, demons, without becoming too evil or good?

[Falcon X]

Unfortunately, I'm a D&D guy, so I don't know how undead demons work, but I'll throw a few thoughts your way:

- Some deities (Like Greyhawk's Wee-Jas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wee_Jas)) make a clear distinction in raising bodies vs. raising spirits.
To them, raising a spirit is a violation of the Grave and a person's right to an after-life. It's considered better if you ask their permission before you raise them. However, it is more evil to bring an unwilling spirit back than to kill them in the first place.
On the other hand, they believe that the body is just a thing. There is no evil in animating a body once the spirit has gone. You might as well be animating a shell made of dirt.

- If you raised the dead strictly under the orders of ruler or religion, than it isn't your character that is defining the morality of the action, it is whoever instructed you to do so.
This could include long-standing orders and regulations.

[Particle_Man]

Tricky to make undead from demons, as summoned demons disappear when killed so you need to either call them to kill them or go to their home in the outer planes to kill them (where they have the home team advantage, to say the least!). Still, that is a practical problem and you asked for ethical advice.

As to how to balance out the evil spell "animate dead"? Cast some good spells too, I suppose. And what is the priest (or priest's client/boss/etc.) using the undead former-demons for? To fight other evil things? To do evil things? To dance to "Thriller"? Motive matters here.

[Zhentarim]

Tricky to make undead from demons, as summoned demons disappear when killed so you need to either call them to kill them or go to their home in the outer planes to kill them (where they have the home team advantage, to say the least!). Still, that is a practical problem and you asked for ethical advice.

As to how to balance out the evil spell "animate dead"? Cast some good spells too, I suppose. And what is the priest (or priest's client/boss/etc.) using the undead former-demons for? To fight other evil things? To do evil things? To dance to "Thriller"? Motive matters here.

Basically, I had an idea for a wrath of the righteous campaign for a character that dabbles in necromancy to support the greater good of fighting other chaotic beings.

[Kelb_Panthera]

How would one play a lawful neutral cleric of Abadar player who occasionally creates undead from say, demons, without becoming too evil or good?

Unless you're hunting demons to animate, it's gonna be a hell of tough row to hoe. Both calling demons and animating the dead are categorically evil acts. You'd have to do good in equal degree to remain neutral on that axis.

Lawful's easy; the rules of the church come first, before any other consideration. Next comes social duty (may or may not coincide with the dictates of the church), then the law of the land (ditto), though these two can be flipped if you prefer. Finally, personal feelings about a situation can be considered, though the appropriate course of action is likely already determined by this point.

The trick to lawful is to remember that your locus of moral and ethical guidance is an external one.

[legomaster00156]

Very minor spoilers below the cut.
Whatever the actual moral or ethical alignment you hold, in the world of Golarion, undead are evil by default. As you will be spending a large portion of the campaign in the company of paladins and other goodly characters, this could cause friction.

[Florian]

How would one play a lawful neutral cleric of Abadar player who occasionally creates undead from say, demons, without becoming too evil or good?

Creating Undead is never a good deed, no matter your intentions.

That being said, what source material you use does actually not matter.

[Inevitability]

Did anyone say 'lawful neutral'?

Essentially, being lawful neutral means you hold some kind of code above all other things, with said code including elements of obedience, order, truthfulness, tradition or honor. This can take many forms: a dutiful town guard, faithful priest and disciplined monk may all be LN.

In this character's case, their code is probably Abadar's teachings. After all, it's a set of commandments that's LN in itself, and being a cleric more-or-less requires sticking to it.

Said teachings seem to be centered around expanding civilization, gathering wealth and preserving order. None of these things specifically conflict with raising undead. In fact: Abadar has at least one undead servitor, the Ghost of Malthus.

Now, there is of course the inherent Evil in raising undead, but fortunately aiding in the destruction of a demon (kind of required if one wants to animate them) is Good. Unless your DM is considering one a much bigger alignment changer than the other (as well as powerful enough on its own to drag you away from LNness), I wouldn't worry about your character changing alignment.

[Zhentarim]

Did anyone say 'lawful neutral'?

Essentially, being lawful neutral means you hold some kind of code above all other things, with said code including elements of obedience, order, truthfulness, tradition or honor. This can take many forms: a dutiful town guard, faithful priest and disciplined monk may all be LN.

In this character's case, their code is probably Abadar's teachings. After all, it's a set of commandments that's LN in itself, and being a cleric more-or-less requires sticking to it.

Said teachings seem to be centered around expanding civilization, gathering wealth and preserving order. None of these things specifically conflict with raising undead. In fact: Abadar has at least one undead servitor, the Ghost of Malthus.

Now, there is of course the inherent Evil in raising undead, but fortunately aiding in the destruction of a demon (kind of required if one wants to animate them) is Good. Unless your DM is considering one a much bigger alignment changer than the other (as well as powerful enough on its own to drag you away from LNness), I wouldn't worry about your character changing alignment.

Thank you. That is helpful.

[Celestia]

Be Judge Dredd. *nods*

[Geddy2112]

As others have said, creating undead of any kind is an objectively evil act. That said, context matters on how evil it is. Any magic used to create undead is going to be evil, but your intent, what undead you create, and how you go about it makes a HUGE difference in the greater scheme. As others have said, simply using a corpse is far less evil or even nonevil, but using a soul is certainly evil.

A lawful neutral person could see the use in undead, particularly the mindless kind(using corpses). What better soldier could you ask for? A skeleton does not need to eat, sleep, breathe, take sick days, blindly follows commands, and is immune to a lot of the things that could kill a living humanoid soldier. Your garden variety animate dead creates mindless skeletons and zombies. If you used these to protect order, fight chaos, etc it would be evil, but also very lawful. Likewise, if you only saw it as a means to protect order, and also saw objectively good things like healing magic, the use of lawful good outsiders, etc, you could balance it out. A really LN person would not see morality, only each as tools to protect order.

Once you start using create undead(the use of souls) and more powerful necromancy it starts to get really ugly. For example, creating an attic whisperer (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/attic-whisperer) requires using the body of a child, preferably one that died from abuse and neglect, and fear based magic to boot. That is some capital E evil. Most powerful ghosts, etc are undead created from some pretty grimdark situations, and knowingly doing these things to get that power makes you a monster and evil. You could be very LE, but the neutral morality is long gone. Likewise, these undead are powerful, and aware. They might remember some of their mortal life, or are just driven by all the evil crap that made them. Such things would be difficult to control if even possible, more likely to kill their creator and whatever else they wanna attack. That said, some ghosts (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/nemhain) and intelligent undead exist for what could be very lawful purposes, but this level of dark magic is gonna go LE without serious exigent circumstances.

A prime example of when an LN person could use necromancy(in mass even) and stay LN(probably) would be if they were part of a city under siege by evil people/things. The city lacks sufficient soldiers and allies to defend against the invaders, whatever they may be. Without more soldiers, the city will inevitably fall and all inside, including thousands of innocent non-combatants, will be killed. They might abhor the practice, but going into the city graveyards and catacombs and animating every corpse possible, and if possible creating more powerful undead is the only way to save the city. They will probably always feel like garbage for doing it, but they could say pragmatically "The dead must join our ranks, or we will be joining theirs."

[Zhentarim]

As others have said, creating undead of any kind is an objectively evil act. That said, context matters on how evil it is. Any magic used to create undead is going to be evil, but your intent, what undead you create, and how you go about it makes a HUGE difference in the greater scheme. As others have said, simply using a corpse is far less evil or even nonevil, but using a soul is certainly evil.

A lawful neutral person could see the use in undead, particularly the mindless kind(using corpses). What better soldier could you ask for? A skeleton does not need to eat, sleep, breathe, take sick days, blindly follows commands, and is immune to a lot of the things that could kill a living humanoid soldier. Your garden variety animate dead creates mindless skeletons and zombies. If you used these to protect order, fight chaos, etc it would be evil, but also very lawful. Likewise, if you only saw it as a means to protect order, and also saw objectively good things like healing magic, the use of lawful good outsiders, etc, you could balance it out. A really LN person would not see morality, only each as tools to protect order.

Once you start using create undead(the use of souls) and more powerful necromancy it starts to get really ugly. For example, creating an attic whisperer (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/attic-whisperer) requires using the body of a child, preferably one that died from abuse and neglect, and fear based magic to boot. That is some capital E evil. Most powerful ghosts, etc are undead created from some pretty grimdark situations, and knowingly doing these things to get that power makes you a monster and evil. You could be very LE, but the neutral morality is long gone. Likewise, these undead are powerful, and aware. They might remember some of their mortal life, or are just driven by all the evil crap that made them. Such things would be difficult to control if even possible, more likely to kill their creator and whatever else they wanna attack. That said, some ghosts (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/nemhain) and intelligent undead exist for what could be very lawful purposes, but this level of dark magic is gonna go LE without serious exigent circumstances.

A prime example of when an LN person could use necromancy(in mass even) and stay LN(probably) would be if they were part of a city under siege by evil people/things. The city lacks sufficient soldiers and allies to defend against the invaders, whatever they may be. Without more soldiers, the city will inevitably fall and all inside, including thousands of innocent non-combatants, will be killed. They might abhor the practice, but going into the city graveyards and catacombs and animating every corpse possible, and if possible creating more powerful undead is the only way to save the city. They will probably always feel like garbage for doing it, but they could say pragmatically "The dead must join our ranks, or we will be joining theirs."


I like where this is going. I might even try this in a kingmaker, or something.