Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?

[lunatron]

It depends on the setting, but generally, Necromancy is thought of as evil, and Conjuration is not. Why is this?

The main reason necromancy is seen as evil seems to come down to consent - those bodies in the graveyard did not consent to become sweet skeleton archers before they died. (But what if they did? Imagine a society where it is common to give one's body to the government Necromancers in one's will, and there are skeleton fire brigades that rush into burning buildings to save the still-living, not having to worry about the smoke.)

Conjuration seems to have the same consent problem. Those mephits are just chilling, and suddenly, some rando ganks them and forces them to fight until they either die or are unsummoned. (Again, one could imagine a scenario where the conjurer, beforehand, went and met all those mephits and negotiated contracts with them, but that generally does not happen.)

So why is making a bunch of sweet skeleton archers seen as bad but conjuring and a bunch of animals/elementals/fey seen as a neutral or good act?

[Millstone85]

The main reason necromancy is seen as evil seems to come down to consentI think the main reason is actually that, in the current lore, undead are animated by necrotic energy that is innerently inimical to life. Should these skeletons escape your control, which is a very real risk, they will go on a murderous rampage. Their mere presence might also taint the land somehow.

[Shuruke]

For animal and fey your not summoning actual creatures your shaping them a lot like find familiar.

Generally necromancy is considered evil because undead are inherently evil. If u summon one and leave it for your command to wear of it'll eventually hurt someone

Also originally undead making was forcing souls back into corpses under your service
Now its just animating corpse in most cases.

I had a necroficer a artifice who upgraded undead with gadgets and etc.

They were undead equivalents of chakra puppets from Naruto

He would find suitable bodies by making deals with people close to death who wished to do good even in undeath or who had grudges they wanted to be their to end.

He served a religion that viewed death as the final end no afterlife etc and the god would allow those under her to serve eternally as revenant like servants in order to serve greater good.

I think in the end it is context

Slot of religions respect the dead if it is same in that world than desecrating corpses for archers is probably very frowned upon

But in a world where necromancy exist maybe u buy someone's corpse for 100gp they sign u give them a pendant and when they die their corpse teleport to u Or maybe towns just prefer to let friendly necromancer have corpse cuz disease that death can bring etc

[TIPOT]

I mean the whole connotations of skulls = villains is pretty common (Mitchell and Webb Sketch) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU).

I'd also say it's less to do with consent and more to do with the whole dead people walking around thing. Would you be happy with having a corpse just hanging around your house? No it's creepy. Plus I mean you say you got all those bodies by fair and legal means but what's stopping you from just killing a few people and getting a few extra bodies that way? Noone would be able to tell or notice if you're sneaky enough.

Undead are also inherently evil in 5e. They will go on murderous rampages given the chance. It seems incredibly risky having them around for any reason, let alone one as mundane as a firefighting service. If you have a wizard that can cast 3rd level spells they almost certainly have better things to do with their time/

[Unoriginal]

It depends on the setting, but generally, Necromancy is thought of as evil, and Conjuration is not. Why is this?

The main reason necromancy is seen as evil seems to come down to consent - those bodies in the graveyard did not consent to become sweet skeleton archers before they died. (But what if they did? Imagine a society where it is common to give one's body to the government Necromancers in one's will, and there are skeleton fire brigades that rush into burning buildings to save the still-living, not having to worry about the smoke.)

Conjuration seems to have the same consent problem. Those mephits are just chilling, and suddenly, some rando ganks them and forces them to fight until they either die or are unsummoned. (Again, one could imagine a scenario where the conjurer, beforehand, went and met all those mephits and negotiated contracts with them, but that generally does not happen.)

So why is making a bunch of sweet skeleton archers seen as bad but conjuring and a bunch of animals/elementals/fey seen as a neutral or good act?

Necromancy is not evil in 5e, the books are clear on this.

Animating undead is something only evil people do regularly, because as pointed out above you are enslaving omnicidal evil spirits that are going to try to destroy as much life as they can if you ever lose control.

People don't have to ask why stealing the brains of serial killers and putting them in raptor bodies to serve as a remote-controlled army would be something only evil people would do regularly, right?

Also, you are changing the corpse's nature so much it becomes much harder to resurrect the original being who died. That's a detail for many beings who can't afford resurrection, but still.

Meanwhile, a lot of the Conjuration spells actually summon willing participants (ex: Find Familiar, Planar Ally) and the summoned creatures don't risk to actually die (although it'll still be unpleasant to them). Of course doing things like summoning someone to torture them or enslaving them long-term against their will would be evil.

[Boci]

People don't have to ask why stealing the brains of serial killers and putting them in raptor bodies to serve as a remote-controlled army would be something only evil people would do regularly, right?

Easy to say that when you're behind a computer in modern society that presumably doesn't have any real militarty threats, but if you live on a border town that is periodically threatened by raiders who will slaughter and pillage and rape if they break through kingdom's defences, then serial killer brain raptors starts looking a whole lot more appealing. At the very least it becomes a discussion, not "Urgh, do I really have to explain why this is bad and we should just risk being murdered raiders".

[DeTess]

Basically, Necromancy is evil because the fluff says it's badwrong. If you design your own setting, you could very easily make necromancy non-evil just by changing the fluff to something where undead are more like tools than monsters.

[Mordaedil]

In AD&D Necromancy was home to all of the Cure Wounds spells and was considered very grey.

In 3rd edition, for some reason, they were converted to Conjuration (Healing) school of magic, leaving Inflict wounds series behind in Necromancy.

In 5th edition, they made their way to Evocation.

Personally, I think necromancy is the school that makes sense for healing spells and I think it was a mistake to move them to any other school. Certain spells still remained with Necromancy further complicating the issues, such as Undeath to Death (associated with Circle of Death, which remains in 5e), which channels positive energy that destroys undead.

But honestly, Necromancy isn't evil. It just lacks support to be anything else.

[Unoriginal]

Easy to say that when you're behind a computer in modern society that presumably doesn't have any real militarty threats, but if you live on a border town that is periodically threatened by raiders who will slaughter and pillage and rape if they break through kingdom's defences, then serial killer brain raptors starts looking a whole lot more appealing. At the very least it becomes a discussion, not "Urgh, do I really have to explain why this is bad and we should just risk being murdered raiders".

Thing is, if you have the means to create those remote-controlled serial killer raptors, you also have the means to create other ways to defend the town. Like remote-controlled raptors, without the whole costly procedure and enslavement of murderously mentally ill people parts.



Basically, Necromancy is evil because the fluff says it's badwrong.

The fluff does NOT say that necromancy is badwrong.

Only regularly creating evil monsters hell-bent on destroying life is.

[DeTess]

The fluff does NOT say that necromancy is badwrong.

Only regularly creating evil monsters hell-bent on destroying life is.

And the fluff decides that undead are malicious, rather than just a tool that can be used for good or evil.

Edit: but yeah, I meant to refer to the fluff saying creating undead was badwrong, rather than all the necromancy spells. Sorry for the confusion.

[Unoriginal]

And the fluff decides that undead are malicious, rather than just a tool that can be used for good or evil.

True, but that doesn't change most of necromancy is portrayed as a tool that can be used for good or evil.




Edit: but yeah, I meant to refer to the fluff saying creating undead was badwrong, rather than all the necromancy spells. Sorry for the confusion.

Fair. IMO I like that most Undead are damn evil in 5e, but that's just a question of taste.

[Boci]

Thing is, if you have the means to create those remote-controlled serial killer raptors, you also have the means to create other ways to defend the town. Like remote-controlled raptors, without the whole costly procedure and enslavement of murderously mentally ill people parts.

DM dependant surely. I don't know of hard RAW for creating permenet undead or constructs or the like.

[Millstone85]

DM dependant surely. I don't know of hard RAW for creating permenet undead or constructs or the like.The ghouls, ghasts, wrights and mummies obtained from the create undead spell are permanent. It is your control over them that must be reasserted every 24 hours.

[GloatingSwine]

The main reason necromancy is seen as evil seems to come down to consent - those bodies in the graveyard did not consent to become sweet skeleton archers before they died. (But what if they did? Imagine a society where it is common to give one's body to the government Necromancers in one's will, and there are skeleton fire brigades that rush into burning buildings to save the still-living, not having to worry about the smoke.)

Like the Dustmen in Sigil. They allow people to indenture their bodies after death to help with their work (which is tidying the streets of and amassing a great number of dead bodies).



I fear though that the answer is convenience. "Is a Necromancer" is a reasonably easy way for a baddie to have a built in army of loyal yet disposable goons for the party to snack on.

[Pelle]

Fair. IMO I like that most Undead are damn evil in 5e, but that's just a question of taste.

Agreed. Animating the dead being evil is what's cool about it. Making undead morally neutral makes it boring and totally uninteresting IMO. Using evil means to reach a good goal, that's interesting however.

[RogueJK]

Undead are also inherently evil in 5e. They will go on murderous rampages given the chance. It seems incredibly risky having them around for any reason, let alone one as mundane as a firefighting service.

Don't forget that several of the Conjuration summoning spells have the same drawback. For example, with Conjure Fey, Conjure Elemental, and Summon Greater Demon, if you lose Concentration or the summoned creature succeeds on a saving throw, the summoner loses control and they turn hostile.

I'd say summoning a Demon and then losing control so that it goes on a murderous rampage is just as "evil" as raising undead and then losing control so they go on a murderous rampage.

[Stray]

I think main reason common people would be against necromancy (and saw it as evil, regardless of where on alignment chart it would fall) is that the concept of some creep stealing the corpses of their friends and family from local cemetery seems very real and easy to imagine. Just the amount of real life folklore and superstition about restless dead shows how natural is for humans to think about it. They would probably have similar unkind opinions about summoning fiends, it just sounds like inviting trouble no matter how safe the mage swears it is. But fairies and elementals? That's more vague, requires some knowledge on interplanar matters to form an opinion.

[Naanomi]

On a more cosmological level... conjugation is temporary, none of the effects linger forever, most end after a short time and even those that don’t tend to summon beings that will eventually be called/forced back to their home planes or eventually killed... of course, reckless summoning can be evil, as can reckless fireball-casting... just that the magic isn’t inherently so

Making undead creates long term threats, things that have to be put down to stop being a direct threat even years after the magic that creates them... and even if then killed, the process leaves their Negatice Energy (which isn’t evil, but in artificial quantities is dangerous... toxic waste in the Prime Material if you will) residue behind to screw up the world even more

[sophontteks]

Necromancy is not considered evil.
Creating undead is considered evil.
Probably because undead are evil.

[Malifice]

It depends on the setting, but generally, Necromancy is thought of as evil, and Conjuration is not. Why is this?

The main reason necromancy is seen as evil seems to come down to consent - those bodies in the graveyard did not consent to become sweet skeleton archers before they died. (But what if they did? Imagine a society where it is common to give one's body to the government Necromancers in one's will, and there are skeleton fire brigades that rush into burning buildings to save the still-living, not having to worry about the smoke.)

Conjuration seems to have the same consent problem. Those mephits are just chilling, and suddenly, some rando ganks them and forces them to fight until they either die or are unsummoned. (Again, one could imagine a scenario where the conjurer, beforehand, went and met all those mephits and negotiated contracts with them, but that generally does not happen.)

So why is making a bunch of sweet skeleton archers seen as bad but conjuring and a bunch of animals/elementals/fey seen as a neutral or good act?

Animating dead expressly uses 'dark evil magic' and binds an evil murderous spirit in the body that if not controlled goes on a killing spree. Plus the defiling of the dead of course.

It uses the dark side. To create/ call forth an evil spirit and turn a person's corpse into a murder machine.

[Malifice]

Necromancy is not considered evil.
Creating undead is considered evil.
Probably because undead are evil.

Its evil for the same reasons force lightning is.

Dark magic.

It's also evil to willingly create a monster worse than Jeffrey Dahmer, using a person's corpse and that same dark magic.

[Sigreid]

In the ancient editions animated dead and undead were created by channeling energy from the negative material plain. As a consequence they were frequently described as having an insatiable hunger for the positive energy of life.

Being undead was horrible.

[KorvinStarmast]

But honestly, Necromancy isn't evil. It just lacks support to be anything else. Here's an idea, if you can strip away that which it isn't, the you arrive at what it is. (Hint: Evil)

...most Undead are damn evil in 5e, Creating evil, killing creatures being evil is a logical relationship.

It's also evil to willingly create a monster worse than Jeffrey Dahmer, using a person's corpse and that same dark magic. I've also seen the point about dominating/enslaving a soul as evil, but that seems to get hand waved away by murderhobo sorts with no moral compass.

And Druids detest the undead in D&D 5e explicitly:

Druids accept that which is cruel in Nature, and they hate that which is unnatural, including Aberrations (such as Beholders and mind flayers) and Undead (such as Zombies and vampires). Druids sometimes lead raids against such creatures, especially when the Monsters encroach on the druids’ territory.

[Naanomi]

And Druids detest the undead in D&D 5e explicitly:
Excepting in some situations Circle of Spores Druids...

[Unoriginal]

Creating evil, killing creatures being evil is a logical relationship.

Which is something I've been saying since my first post in this thread (and earlier, but that's not relevant).

And that's just for the simplest Undead. For examples, Mummies are explicitly in a "I have no mouth and I must scream" type situation, so anyone creating one is really going the extra mile in malevolence.

[KorvinStarmast]

Excepting in some situations Circle of Spores Druids... Ravnica?

(The UA on that one never really did it for me, but I do understand the theme ... )

[Imbalance]

Consider the eiditic torment of witnessing your late father, sister, or significant other profanely raised, will-less and desecrated from a deserved eternal rest, consigned to the beck and call of one with no regard for their former life or respect given to your mourning. Compare this incomparable grief to the plight of one who voluntarily submits or is compelled through dominion to serve for a time and is then returned alive.

[DeTess]

Agreed. Animating the dead being evil is what's cool about it. Making undead morally neutral makes it boring and totally uninteresting IMO. Using evil means to reach a good goal, that's interesting however.

I disagree, but this is probably a matter of taste. In my opinion, a setting that has 'undead' as tools, rather than monsters, ca be very interesting if taken to it's logical conclusion. Adventures including this aspect could be a race to retrieve an artifact capable of controlling a city-states unread workforce before someone uses it for nefarious ends, or the exploration of a long-lost city whose population has died out, but where the undead workers are still operating to keep it intact and safe from outsiders. It's obviously not something to be used for every setting and adventure, but morally neutral undead functioning effectively like automatons could make for an interesting story-arc.

[OverLordOcelot]

You seem to be going back and forth on what 'counts' for the discussion. RAW in 5e necromancy is simply not evil, raising dead bodies doesn't change your alignment or force you to not follow a good Deity or anything like that. Necromancy is more often considered evil because you're taking people's dead bodies and (in the eyes of many societies) defiling them, and because if you don't keep control of the undead they go on a rampage, but this is a setting choice not fundamental to 5e. It's the same way that warlocks are not evil per RAW, but in many setting most warlocks fall somewhat under the 'evil' banner because of their patrons. Conjuration doesn't fall under 'evil' as often because you're not defiling anyone's body, and with most conjurations the conjured creatures don't persist past the conjuration. Note that summoning demons or devils is often considered as evil as necromancy in settings. In medieval European history, defiling the dead was considered extremely bad - lots of early anatomists and doctors had to secretly graverob to find bodies to examine or practice on - and so was making deals with the devil or his demonic servants. Tolkein specifically drew on this and incorporated it into his world, with Sauron first appearing as "the necromancer". Animosity towards both conjuration and necromancy stems from this bit of history and mythology; I think if the cultural background was based more on pre-Christian polythesim in Europe or things like voodoo instead of Christian Europe and Tolkein, there wouldn't be such a stark 'necromancy and devil summoning = evil' thread running through backgrounds.

[Pelle]

I disagree, but this is probably a matter of taste. In my opinion, a setting that has 'undead' as tools, rather than monsters, ca be very interesting if taken to it's logical conclusion.

I think it's even more interesting if the tools are monsters, instead of just normal tools. Using undead as labour, knowing very well losing control means trouble, is an interesting dilemma. Using undead as labour, but there's no risk because the undead are harmless, is just like using a tractor. Not really adding anything (except people complaining about losing their jobs and crying for universal basic income, but you get that with technology as well). But yes, it's a matter of taste.

[Naanomi]

Ravnica?

(The UA on that one never really did it for me, but I do understand the theme ... )
In the Ravnica book, but probably fairly setting neutral

[Malifice]

You seem to be going back and forth on what 'counts' for the discussion. RAW in 5e necromancy is simply not evil, raising dead bodies doesn't change your alignment or force you to not follow a good Deity or anything like that. Necromancy is more often considered evil because you're taking people's dead bodies and (in the eyes of many societies) defiling them, and because if you don't keep control of the undead they go on a rampage, but this is a setting choice not fundamental to 5e. It's the same way that warlocks are not evil per RAW, but in many setting most warlocks fall somewhat under the 'evil' banner because of their patrons. Conjuration doesn't fall under 'evil' as often because you're not defiling anyone's body, and with most conjurations the conjured creatures don't persist past the conjuration. Note that summoning demons or devils is often considered as evil as necromancy in settings. In medieval European history, defiling the dead was considered extremely bad - lots of early anatomists and doctors had to secretly graverob to find bodies to examine or practice on - and so was making deals with the devil or his demonic servants. Tolkein specifically drew on this and incorporated it into his world, with Sauron first appearing as "the necromancer". Animosity towards both conjuration and necromancy stems from this bit of history and mythology; I think if the cultural background was based more on pre-Christian polythesim in Europe or things like voodoo instead of Christian Europe and Tolkein, there wouldn't be such a stark 'necromancy and devil summoning = evil' thread running through backgrounds.

Look at that RAW again.

Animating the dead is not good and only evil creatures do so frequently.

[sophontteks]

Its evil for the same reasons force lightning is.

Dark magic.

It's also evil to willingly create a monster worse than Jeffrey Dahmer, using a person's corpse and that same dark magic.
Necromancy is a school of magic publicly taught to wizards in school. Its not dark magic. Raising the dead as undead, however, is.

Similiarly there is nothing evil about conjuration, but summoning demons is definately an exception.

[Malifice]

Necromancy is a school of magic publicly taught to wizards in school. Its not dark magic. Raising the dead as undead, however, is.

Raising the dead with necromancy expressly uses 'foul evil black magic'.

Says so in the zombie and skeleton entry in the MM.

[sophontteks]

Raising the dead with necromancy expressly uses 'foul evil black magic'.

Says so in the zombie and skeleton entry in the MM.
I know. Thats exactly what I said.

[Malifice]

I know. Thats exactly what I said.

Oh good. Were in agreement.

[Millstone85]

In the ancient editions animated dead and undead were created by channeling energy from the negative material plain. As a consequence they were frequently described as having an insatiable hunger for the positive energy of life.I am pretty sure that's still how it works.
Like a dome above the other planes, the Positive Plane is the source of radiant energy and the raw life force that suffuses all living beings, from the puny to the sublime. Its dark refleclion is the Negative Plane, the source of necrotic energy that destroys the living and animates the undead.

[Man_Over_Game]

In "Science-y" terms, Necromancy from the DnD universe, as a whole (as in, more than just 5e), uses Negative Energy which is the literal element of Evil. Being subjected to it can kill living people or even forcefully change your alignment to become Evil in some cases.

In "Philosophy" terms, using Undead is generally described as warping the soul and the body in a way that's against their will, usually on a creature that had free will. This is reflected by the fact that being undead prevents you from being impacted by Resurrection abilities. Even if you don't agree that you're using the original soul to control the body, it's hard to deny that there are rules that imply you are impacting the soul's ability to return to life. To me, this translates as you basically grabbing the soul, forcing it back into its body, and controlling it against its will (which makes the most sense as to why it can't opt to be resurrected).

Additionally, most binding of Conjuration doesn't use souls. The creatures you're binding don't have free will, and are bound to their alignments. Or, in other terms, part of their existence is being dragged around by powers beyond them. They are compelled to do evil, but now are compelled to fight for you. They never had a soul or free will in the first place, and so you're not actually making them do anything that they'd hate doing more than what they'd already be doing.

[sophontteks]

Oh good. Were in agreement.
So we are, sorry. Maybe I misunderstood what you were orginally saying.

[sophontteks]

In "Science-y" terms, Necromancy from the DnD universe, as a whole (as in, more than just 5e), uses Negative Energy which is the literal element of Evil. Being subjected to it can kill living people or even forcefully change your alignment to become Evil in some cases.

In "Philosophy" terms, using Undead is generally described as warping the soul and the body in a way that's against their will, usually on a creature that had free will. This is reflected by the fact that being undead prevents you from being impacted by Resurrection abilities. Even if you don't agree that you're using the original soul to control the body, it's hard to deny that there are rules that imply you are impacting the soul's ability to return to life. To me, this translates as you basically grabbing the soul, forcing it back into its body, and controlling it against its will (which makes the most sense as to why it can't opt to be resurrected).

Additionally, most binding of Conjuration doesn't use souls. The creatures you're binding don't have free will, and are bound to their alignments. Or, in other terms, part of their existence is being dragged around by powers beyond them. They are compelled to do evil, but now are compelled to fight for you. They never had a soul or free will in the first place, and so you're not actually making them do anything that they'd hate doing more than what they'd already be doing.
Well don't forget that summoning demons is strictly conjuration and its not only evil, its downright dangerous. Control over the demon is limited and creating paths for demons to enter the material realm is beyond taboo. Out of the Abyss comes to mind when discussing the consequences at an extreme.

And the world is about a balance of positive and negative energy. The use of negative energy in magic is not evil for its own sake despite its state.

[Man_Over_Game]

Well don't forget that summoning demons is strictly conjuration and its not only evil, its downright dangerous. Control over the demon is limited and creating paths for demons to enter the material realm is beyond taboo. Out of the Abyss comes to mind when discussing the consequences at an extreme.

Sure, I'm not saying that's not a good reason to describe Conjuration as evil (I even have Conjuration as being slightly evil in my quiz), but just as to why Necromancy is considered inherently evil where Conjuration isn't.

Wizard Necromancy magic uses the element of pure evil, and it forces souls with free will to not have it. Conjuration doesn't. To me, it's not a matter of opinion or necessity/recklessness. If you use the Evil element, it's Evil, but working with Evil people or Evil creatures is fair game.


And the world is about a balance of positive and negative energy. The use of negative energy in magic is not evil for its own sake despite its state.
Normally, I'd agree with you, but simply going to a plane of Good/Evil energy can impact you based off of alignment (at least, in older editions). There is a piece of weird planar science associated with the powers of Good/Evil/Law/Chaos. It's not as important in 5e, but neither are things like Paladin/Cleric piety.

[sophontteks]

Sure, I'm not saying that's not a good reason to describe Conjuration as evil (I even have Conjuration as being slightly evil in my quiz), but just as to why Necromancy is considered inherently evil where Conjuration isn't.

Wizard Necromancy magic uses the element of pure evil, and it forces souls with free will to not have it. Conjuration doesn't. To me, it's not a matter of opinion or necessity/recklessness. If you use the Evil element, it's Evil, but working with Evil people or Evil creatures is fair game.
But is it considered evil?
Do they not teach all wizards necromancy in school?
Its just another school of magic, publically taught, commonly used, which has the potential to do some seriously evil stuff.

But thats no different then the other schools. Mind control, reading thoughts, fireballs, summoning demons etc etc. Surely they teach wise use of all magic to wizards knowing full well how dangerous magic in general can be.

When you cast spells you use the magic around you. You are not visiting another plane or summoning its magic. Negative and positive energy exist in the material plane. They exist in balance.

[rlc]

For most people, perception is reality, especially if nobody bothers challenging it.

[sithlordnergal]

You know, I would actually say Necromancy is more Neutral then Evil. It is percieved as "evil" due to Necromancers raising Undead...but at the same time spells like Revivify, Ressurection, True Ressurection, and Raise Dead are also Necromancy spells. Necromancy just gets a bad rap from evil Necromancers.

[MoiMagnus]

In "Science-y" terms, Necromancy from the DnD universe, as a whole (as in, more than just 5e), uses Negative Energy which is the literal element of Evil.

Since AD&D disagree with this (standard good-aligned healing is classified as necromancy), it would not surprise me if some DnD settings had non-evil Necromancy. But you're probably right for most of them.

[Man_Over_Game]

You know, I would actually say Necromancy is more Neutral then Evil. It is percieved as "evil" due to Necromancers raising Undead...but at the same time spells like Revivify, Ressurection, True Ressurection, and Raise Dead are also Necromancy spells. Necromancy just gets a bad rap from evil Necromancers.

There's a bit of difference between Holy magic and Arcane magic, especially regarding Necromancy. Clerics can cast Necromancy just fine, because they're beseeching their god for divine intervention. The god, who has some leeway with where souls go, can resurrect just fine as part of the cosmic balance. They are not forcing a soul, they're just offering a bridge for the soul to cross, and that's fine. Free will is never impacted (and free will/alignment is very important for planar powers/gods).

Wizards, on the other hand, treat Necromancy as the energy manipulation of Life. Tug some from here to heal me there. Note that none of the spells you mentioned are available to Wizards, and the closest thing they get to a healing spell is using Life Transference (a Necromancy spell) to drain their own health to heal someone else. In every other instance of Wizard Necromancy, they're either stealing someone else's life or creating undead.

Necromancy, as in the Element, isn't inherently evil, because it simply just means the manipulation of life (where Evocation is the element of energy creation, which includes healing energy). However, Wizard Necromancy almost assuredly is.

[jaappleton]

Conjuration might be MORE evil.

A corpse? Look, nobody was using it.

Summon an Elemental? Jeff the Earth Elemental is late for dinner now. His wife already thought he was cheating, now she DEFINITELY thinks so and wants a divorce. You ended a marriage just because you wanted backup against the vampire, you jerk.

[OverLordOcelot]

Look at that RAW again.

Animating the dead is not good and only evil creatures do so frequently.

What book and page#? It's not in the alignment rules, spellcasting rules, or animate dead spell IIRC.

[Unoriginal]

Casting Ray of Enfeeblement isn't more evil than casting Firebolt. No matter the energies involved, it's only the use you're doing of the tool that has a moral impact (or not).

On the other hand, concerning animating corpses, there's something that people have to consider: "naturally"-occuring undead.

Not only Ghosts, but various undead, even Zombies and Skeletons, can happen without the intervention of any sapient forces. Places struck by great tragedies or intense acts of hatred can, sometime, result in the dead bodies getting occupied by evil spirits, leading to them continuing what the body was doing before death in a danse macabre as a default, when they're not actively seeking life to destroy. Others are the result of the person dying after committing a great evil or having unfinished business, leaving them to stalk the world of the living as the immaterial shadows of what they were or as deformed corpses. And a Paladin who betray their oaths and die without repentance will rise as a Death Knight, potentially resulting in the suffering of thousands.

Someone who uses a spell like Animate Dead is someone who knows of all those things, know how much a blight on the world it can be, and go "well, let's make more of them artificially".

[Millstone85]

What book and page#? It's not in the alignment rules, spellcasting rules, or animate dead spell IIRC.It is in fact in the chapter on spellcasting.
Necromancy spells manipulate the energies of life and death. Such spells can grant an extra reserve of life force, drain the life energy from another creature, create the undead, or even bring the dead back to life.
Creating the undead through the use of necromancy spells such as animate dead is not a good act, and only evil casters use such spells frequently.

[KOLE]

Don't forget that several of the Conjuration summoning spells have the same drawback. For example, with Conjure Fey, Conjure Elemental, and Summon Greater Demon, if you lose Concentration or the summoned creature succeeds on a saving throw, the summoner loses control and they turn hostile.

I'd say summoning a Demon and then losing control so that it goes on a murderous rampage is just as "evil" as raising undead and then losing control so they go on a murderous rampage.

There’s a lot of lore about magic practicioners convenin with demons/fiends being an evil act. Just because it doesn’t specifically call out the school of Conjuration doesn’t mean it isn’t established.

In the same way, casting a Necromancy school spell such as False Life or Chill Touch usually doesn’t raise eyebrows, but Animate Dead specifically does.

[Naanomi]

Summoning spells create an hour of danger at most... animated undead that lose control are a danger potentially indefinitely (leaving aside the non-mechanically represented cosmological damage it may also be causing)

[Asmotherion]

Necromancy is viewed as evil because it's lore is textbook "i use the force of evil unpure death to replace/mimick/ridicule the forces of life".

Conjuration is neutral. You can conjure good neutral or evil beings (or forces) and have them do the opposit of their alignment. it's neutral by itself... what matters is how you use it.

That is if you believe in the sort of thing such as good or evil. For a Boccobian for example "it's just magic. Use at your own jugment (translation: you probably have like 18 int... use it when you decide on something instead of following your impulses). Boccob doesn't care 'cause you're insignificant."



if you were to break down every single aspect of D&D into perspective and overanalyse it: Throwing a Fireball is also evil because you never can calculate for casualties. And so is dealing a death blow because the monster or humanoid you just killed might have a fammily. This means all PCs are either Evil or Neutral at best and only NPCs living a completely mundane life ever have a chance to be "pure good". The answer is: Don't think about it.

[Naanomi]

That is if you believe in the sort of thing such as good or evil. For a Boccobian for example "it's just magic. Use at your own jugment (translation: you probably have like 18 int... use it when you decide on something instead of following your impulses). Boccob doesn't care 'cause you're insignificant."

if you were to break down every single aspect of D&D into perspective and overanalyse it: Throwing a Fireball is also evil because you never can calculate for casualties. And so is dealing a death blow because the monster or humanoid you just killed might have a fammily. This means all PCs are either Evil or Neutral at best and only NPCs living a completely mundane life ever have a chance to be "pure good". The answer is: Don't think about it.
The Great Wheel Cosmology has a lot to say about that... killing isn’t evil, because beings from the Plane of Good sometimes kill; same with using fire magic... and it doesn’t matter if Boccob cares or not; the *universe* knows

[Paleomancer]

A good rule of thumb to understanding the arbitrary nature of how magic is defined good or evil, is that "magic" historically was tied to the litany of insults and slurs used by a given religion to criticize rival faiths. In terms of folklore, a necromancer is literally just someone who speaks with the dead... often by summoning them (if you visit a psychic, technically you and the psychic are both committing necromancy :smallamused:). A conjurer is someone who summons, bargains with, and often binds with supernatural beings... which includes undead (and overlaps with warlock). A priest petitions a god/the gods for answers... and might be answered by a holy spiritual being (including the dead) or bind supernatural beings (see the Tarrasque, in fact) - also overlaps with warlock. A sorcerer does all of the above and their ancestor did not sleep with a dragon.

Another part is how we ascribe "real-life" meanings to imaginary creatures. With undead, you have the general human fears of mortality, common beliefs in souls or afterlife, and strong cultural taboos against defiling the dead. A necromancer who creates undead is something most people are likely to find repugnant. Elemental spirits in the form of actual mobile elemental forces don't actually exist (even in mythology - you can thank alchemy for most of that), so there is no real or perceived basis in actual life to say whether binding them would be right or wrong. Golems in modern fiction are essentially magical robots, and vary in how intelligent/mindless they are. Once upon a time, summoning faerie beings might have been seen as dangerous, nigh suicidal, but thanks to Disney and Tolkien, people largely have forgotten that mythological fey were treacherous, capricious, and often violent beings that would kidnap children as pets and hunt travelers for sport... As noted by previous posters, summoning fiends is, like binding undead, considered an evil act, but traditionally, fiends in mythology are closer to incorporeal undead than actual flesh-and-blood entities, so we get considerable overlap with necromancy (and in fact, binding demons could be considered both necromancy and conjuration by etymological definitions). Summoning animals to fight for us is something people still kind of do in real life (think guard or hunting dogs), we just had more creatures to that list than normally feasible.

[Hail Tempus]

People sometimes seem to tie themselves in moral knots trying to justify why their character, who is built around raising and controlling undead, isn’t actually evil. What’s the point? Unless your DM bans evil characters, what’s the problem with just putting NE on your character sheet and raising undead to your (dark) heart’s content?

A good character wouldn’t try to rationalize why it’s okay to create zombies or summon demons. If you have to do such serious moral gymnastics to justify your actions, your character probably isn’t good to begin with.

[Asmotherion]

The Great Wheel Cosmology has a lot to say about that... killing isn’t evil, because beings from the Plane of Good sometimes kill; same with using fire magic... and it doesn’t matter if Boccob cares or not; the *universe* knows

Well it kind of matters to someone who wants access to his offered afterlife. if your God doesn't care it means that you're free to do whatever you want to do and be your true alignment not because your god dictates you to follow some rules but because that's your "true self". And in a Universe were things such as the Afterlife or the existance of Gods is a scientific fact it's a pretty big deal.

As for the killing can be justified... i follow the logic but not necesserally agree with it which is why i prefear not to overthink it. it does pose the question "is too good actually evil"? Let's imagin a world without Demons/Devils and evil beings/outsiders. The next "most evil" thing in polar oposition are evil humanoids etc. When they're out it's neutral beings who are not evil but just "not pure enough". Follow my logic?

[KorvinStarmast]

People sometimes seem to tie themselves in moral knots trying to justify why their character, who is built around raising and controlling undead, isn’t actually evil. What’s the point? Same point as murder hobos claiming to be neutral. :smallcool:


Unless your DM bans evil characters, what’s the problem with just putting NE on your character sheet and raising undead to your (dark) heart’s content? A fair question, but some people do not like that often being evil has consequences. Escapism often conflicts with accepting consequences ...

A good character wouldn’t try to rationalize why it’s okay to create zombies or summon demons. If you have to do such serious moral gymnastics to justify your actions, your character probably isn’t good to begin with.Some people grasp that, some don't.

[Willie the Duck]

Quick note: I will let others discuss the state of RAW for 5e. Not my circus, not my monkeys.


The main reason necromancy is seen as evil seems to come down to consent - those bodies in the graveyard did not consent to become sweet skeleton archers before they died.

That... would be a pretty good justification for why raising the dead would be considered wrong. I think calling it the main reason that necromancy is seen as evil is flat out wrong (not that I've conducted a poll or anything, I just highly doubt it). Regardless, it would be an after-the-fact justification.

The answer for the more general question of 'why is making undead servitors generally* considered something that evil characters do. And that goes back to Gygax. Mind you, Necromancers specifically didn't show up until AD&D 2e, which was after Gygax left the company, but much of the groundwork of evil enemy wizards with undead servants had already been laid down.
*and let's not quibble here about if it is or isn't in a given edition, or how much. Clearly there is variation.

Now, as others have mentioned, there are historical and folklore pieces to contend with. As Paleomancer mentions, a Necromancer was originally someone who contacted the dead, so it was more of what we think of as a diviner. As many people mentioned about graverobbery, it is disrespecting someone else's loved ones' bodies. From a pure social order aspect, if you find a dead body at Joe's house, you really want it to be a reason to call either the coroner or the constable (a situation where 'I have a permit to do this,' or, 'that person consented to become my rotting butler' would be unwelcome). Of course 'the restless dead' are some of folklores' most consistent heavy hitters. So well before the 20th century, there's plenty of reasons why 'guy/gal who trucks with the living dead' is going to pigeonhole one as the villain in a story.

When we get to the 20th century, there is of course Tolkien. As OverLordOcelot points out, Sauron was originally "the necromancer." But even moreso, it's helpful to remember D&D's other main influence: pulp and schlock. Hammer Horror, Weird Tales, Detective Comics, Night of the Living Dead... all that is interwoven into the DNA of D&D as tightly as Tolkien ever was. And in that, if there even was a person out there controlling the shambling zombies or drifting ghosts, they certainly weren't the heroes of the story.

So that's the inspiration. Each edition has done differently how or why undead or those that summon/control them are evil/tend to be evil/are committing evil acts/are seen as evil/etc. Justifications like negative energy plane* or the like are just that. I think the game has overall done a decent job of walking the line of allowing necromancers to be a standard issue thematic bad guy most of the time, but leave some open space for people who want to play that character to justify it if they and their DM want. It's going to come down to a DM call anyways, so leaving it nice and vague is probably best.
*and anyone remember back in 1e when mummies were linked to the positive energy plane? :smalltongue:

[The Jack]

Cause skulls are bad
and mindless skeletons make good minions for -stupid evil- characters who nobody living would follow.
And people get freaked out about dead bodies. It's why we bury or burn the dead and have reservations about organ donation.
And popcorn flicks.
There's a bit of tribalism (living VS dead)
and a fear of magic.


The Negative energy plane is evil, but why is harnessing it bad? People don't become monstrous when we use fire or a poison in a small enough dose to be beneficial.

Evil wizards get up and decide they want to wear black and use skeletons. Now, I understand you can see it as 'the dark side of the force' and using it corrupts you, but by that token do you not require using holy magic make you more good? At which point, can you not game the system and ensure that you use both opposites to keep your head level? And why make Animate dead taint you when firebolt, fireball, charm person and such are all malicious.


Pragmatic mages always beats out Stupid Evil in terms of character and flavour. They're far more fun to play. I want to use Animate Dead to inflate my manpower and reduce casualties in a conflict; surely that's noble use?

From my experience better GMs are more relaxed in what's good or evil.

[KorvinStarmast]

Quick note: I will let others discuss the state of RAW for 5e. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
And a very nice post, nothing further to add except ...

This thread has seen yet again the bait and switch argument about necromancy, the practice of raising and commanding armies of undead as an exercise of power, and the necromancy school of magic that has been a broad classification of things that deal in both life and death.

The arguments I see that protest overly much about necromancy not being evil are those who hide behind the fig leaf of the "school of magic" capturing a variety of spells that mess with the stuff of life and death.

In this edition, the school of necromancy (school of magic) spell raise dead does not work on unwilling souls. If your halfings spirit/soul does not want to come back from a raise dead that spell can't force them to.

This is where intent matters; animate dead doesn't offer a choice or not ... and is the far more common tool of those who practice necromancy.

Anyway, there seems to be a lack of a place to 'meet in the middle' on this so it goes back to "how does it work at your table" which fits well enough for most people.

[Morty]

As usual, I feel like pointing out that you can be a necromancer without ever raising a single undead creature. That being said, D&D does seem to carefully dodge the implications of summoning creatures from other planes to fight and die for you. I also don't see why raising undead needs to be always evil, either. Most people who do that probably don't do it for wholesome reasons and society around them won't look upon it kindly. But that's not the same as slapping an Evil label on it and calling it a day.

[Unoriginal]

And a very nice post, nothing further to add except ...

This thread has seen yet again the bait and switch argument about necromancy, the practice of raising and commanding armies of undead as an exercise of power, and the necromancy school of magic that has been a broad classification of things that deal in both life and death.

The arguments I see that protest overly much about necromancy not being evil are those who hide behind the fig leaf of the "school of magic" capturing a variety of spells that mess with the stuff of life and death.

In this edition, the school of necromancy (school of magic) spell raise dead does not work on unwilling souls. If your halfings spirit/soul does not want to come back from a raise dead that spell can't force them to.

This is where intent matters; animate dead doesn't offer a choice or not ... and is the far more common tool of those who practice necromancy.

Anyway, there seems to be a lack of a place to 'meet in the middle' on this so it goes back to "how does it work at your table" which fits well enough for most people.

There's not bait and switch, though.

The game is clear: necromancy as a school is neutral, creating undead is something only evil people do on a regular basis.

And it's backed up by the logic you are not doing anything inherently malevolent with the non-undead-creating-spells, while the undead creating spells do require being a ****hole to something (be it enslaving a sapient being, despoiling a body, or allowing a dangerous killer who might slip away from your control to walk the land).


That being said, D&D does seem to carefully dodge the implications of summoning creatures from other planes to fight and die for you.

Summoned creatures don't actually die, though.



I also don't see why raising undead needs to be always evil, either. Most people who do that probably don't do it for wholesome reasons and society around them won't look upon it kindly. But that's not the same as slapping an Evil label on it and calling it a day.

Because nearly all Undead are malevolent beings who want to destroy all life.

[KorvinStarmast]

There's not bait and switch, though.
You just did it in your post, in conflating the school of magic with what a Necromancer does.
To put not too fine a point on it, a cleric can use the occasional spell form that school without becoming a Necromancer.

This goes back to a different point, though, that I think you and I agree on. Assigning alignment to a spell is the core mistake.
Magic / the weave is neutral. (And it's dangerous to mess with). What you (the character) do with it, on the other hand, informs one's alignment.
This is in contrast to stuff in D&D 3.x where you would find a spell marked with the alignment label evil. I think that isn't helpful.

When D&D began, spells did not have alignments. (I can't recall if 2e AD&D assigned alignment to spells before 3.x; memory hazy, been a long time since I played in that system .... )

The closest that one got to "chaotic" or "evil" for a spell descriptor was where raise dead was the opposite of finger of death, the latter of which was only cast by an evil high priest which was a cleric with the chaotic alignment. (Then we have various other spells with reverses/inerses in AD&D 1e ...) Lawful priests cast Raise dead, and a Cleric had to declare for Law or Chaos before name level. Yeah, clear as mud.

[Unoriginal]

You just did it in your post, in conflating the school of magic with what a Necromancer does.

How is it *conflating* when I am *differentiating* the school of necromancy and creating undead?



To put not too fine a point on it, a cleric can use the occasional spell form that school without becoming a Necromancer.

You can also be a Wizard with the subclass Necromancer (as in, someone who picked up the School of Necromancy), and never create any undead in your life. Which to be fair is not using the subclass fully, but still possible.

In any case, you could argue that it's superfluous distinction, but it's not a bait and switch.

[Corran]

A good character wouldn’t try to rationalize why it’s okay to create zombies or summon demons. If you have to do such serious moral gymnastics to justify your actions, your character probably isn’t good to begin with.
This is an oversimplification. Decision making is influenced by lots of other factors (which are often far more important) other than the morality of the decision maker. Or you could say, that a decision does not always seem to reflect the morality of the decision maker unless you dig dip into it, assuming that other factors were in play.

[Sigreid]

As usual, I feel like pointing out that you can be a necromancer without ever raising a single undead creature. That being said, D&D does seem to carefully dodge the implications of summoning creatures from other planes to fight and die for you. I also don't see why raising undead needs to be always evil, either. Most people who do that probably don't do it for wholesome reasons and society around them won't look upon it kindly. But that's not the same as slapping an Evil label on it and calling it a day.

Eh, it depends on the nature of the undead. If you're going with the current fluff where every undead created is by its very nature a durable Son of Sam serial killer on a leash that can slip if you're not careful.

[The Jack]

Isn't animate dead a spell that causes other forces to possess a body? You're not actually getting Tim's soul for Tim's body or Sarah's soul for Sarah's bones. Hell the bones don't even need to be from one person.

Animate dead doesn't require anything grisly. A drop of blood and some raw meat.. I guess it's anti-vegan.


Now, for Create Undead, you might have an ethical issue.

Wights and mummies have 'the languages they knew in life' and while one could say "the evil spirit gets a hold of the brain and it's knowledge" I do recall being made a deathlock wight was explicitly a punishment for a warlock.

For Ghouls and Ghasts, they know common apparently regardless of what they knew in life. While you could be inverting souls for this kind of thing, it is more likely (compared to mummies/wights) that you're putting an alien spirit into a body.


I believe that there's a difference between Dead that are animated, and truly undead characters. I'm not sure if the line is quite defined by the two different spell, but there's one more point to make:
Animate dead is a really effective third level spell.
Create undead is a poor choice for it's level, so you really need to be into the whole corpses shtick to pick it up.


Conjure lesser and greater demons are fun spells (well, CLD is broken by virtue of selection, but I'm not sure that's RAI) that most would say is evil. However...

If using these spells is a matter of good and evil, why don't celestials offer alternatives?

[Man_Over_Game]

Isn't animate dead a spell that causes other forces to possess a body? You're not actually getting Tim's soul for Tim's body or Sarah's soul for Sarah's bones. Hell the bones don't even need to be from one person.

That's up for debate, though. You can't target undead with most Resurrection magic, which implies some sort of effect on the soul. True Resurrection says "If the creature's soul is free and willing, it's restored to life..." with no definition of what 'free and willing' means, so that portion is up for debate.

Someone could say that being undead has nothing to do with the corpse's soul, but then you'd have to create a reason why the creature cannot be brought back from most (all?) resurrection magic. If it's the case of the body being occupied, every spell that recreates a new body requires the soul to be 'free and willing' so it really comes down to how a DM would interpret that.

[samcifer]

"Good...? Bad...? I'm the one with the wand."

[Psikerlord]

I think the main reason is actually that, in the current lore, undead are animated by necrotic energy that is innerently inimical to life. Should these skeletons escape your control, which is a very real risk, they will go on a murderous rampage. Their mere presence might also taint the land somehow.

I dont rem any risk of losing control (other than not recasting the spell within 24 hours). If you dont want to recast the spell, you order the skeletons to destroy themselves before the 24 hours is up. No risk involved.

[Willie the Duck]

I dont rem any risk of losing control (other than not recasting the spell within 24 hours). If you dont want to recast the spell, you order the skeletons to destroy themselves before the 24 hours is up. No risk involved.

"No risk involved" => famous last words. :smalltongue:
But more realistically, what if you are killed or incapacitated but all your skeletons not destroyed?
But honestly, it is likely that the PCs are clearly suffering the stigma created by NPC necromancers, and NPCs don't necessarily follow the same rules.

[Unoriginal]

That's up for debate, though. You can't target undead with most Resurrection magic, which implies some sort of effect on the soul. True Resurrection says "If the creature's soul is free and willing, it's restored to life..." with no definition of what 'free and willing' means, so that portion is up for debate.

Actually, no, it doesn't imply that.

The soul is free. It's the *body* that get messed up and turned into a different creature type, and most resurrection magic do require something of the body, while True Resurrection does not.


Animate Dead is STILL something only evil people do regularly, for the simple reason that regularly creating omnicidal maniacs and enslaving dark spirits is not something you can morally do.


I dont rem any risk of losing control (other than not recasting the spell within 24 hours). If you dont want to recast the spell, you order the skeletons to destroy themselves before the 24 hours is up. No risk involved.

You can only give them one ongoing order, and you won't be here to tell them to do that if you take an arrow in the throat and die in the middle of your adventuring.

[The Jack]

I believe a good wizard can use animate dead fairly regularly. Issues are;
-Why are you making something likely to become dangerous
-Why are you needing to make something dangerous.
-Where are you sourcing corpses from.

Because an evil person's going to have a lot more answers to those questions than a good person, but a good person is still going to have answers.

I can store them properly
To reduce labour shortages/to fight bad people whilst minimizing loss of good life.
Criminals/donors/people who don't care for resurrections if the GM rules that the body is buggered by AU.



more "evil" characters are going to use animate dead, but there's plenty of reasons for a "good" character to use it practically.

[Sigreid]

I believe a good wizard can use animate dead fairly regularly. Issues are;
-Why are you making something likely to become dangerous
-Why are you needing to make something dangerous.
-Where are you sourcing corpses from.

Because an evil person's going to have a lot more answers to those questions than a good person, but a good person is still going to have answers.

I can store them properly
To reduce labour shortages/to fight bad people whilst minimizing loss of good life.
Criminals/donors/people who don't care for resurrections if the GM rules that the body is buggered by AU.



more "evil" characters are going to use animate dead, but there's plenty of reasons for a "good" character to use it practically.

In a campaign setting where the animated dead aren't dangerous killers of ill intent just waiting to be free, I could see people selling their bodies to settle debts or provide for their family.

[Malifice]

What book and page#? It's not in the alignment rules, spellcasting rules, or animate dead spell IIRC.

PHB; Spellcasting, Page 203; sidebar:


Necromancy spells manipulate the energies of life and
death. Such spells can grant an extra reserve of life force,
drain the life energy from another creature, create the
undead, or even bring the dead back to life.
Creating the undead through the use of necromancy spells
such as animate dead is not a good act, and only evil casters
use such spells frequently

Creating undead is NOT a good act. ONLY evil casters use such spells frequently.

The implication is that Neutral casters might use such magic occasionally, and Good casters never or almost never.

You are literally using dark 'unholy' magic, to channel the very essense of evil, into the corpse of a dead person (defiling that corpse) to create a murderous killing machine.

That's what you're doing.

You might be doing so for 'Good reasons' but that's irrelevant. Just like if you're slaughtering babies for 'Good reasons' or engaging in genocide for 'Good reasons'. It's still evil.

And if your PC animates the dead frequently, you're evil, regardless of the reasons why you do so.

[Malifice]

I believe a good wizard can use animate dead fairly regularly.

A 5E Wizard that felt as you do, and animated dead regularly, would be Evilly aligned.

[Malifice]

if you were to break down every single aspect of D&D into perspective and overanalyse it: Throwing a Fireball is also evil because you never can calculate for casualties. And so is dealing a death blow because the monster or humanoid you just killed might have a fammily. This means all PCs are either Evil or Neutral at best and only NPCs living a completely mundane life ever have a chance to be "pure good". The answer is: Don't think about it.

Killing in self defence is not evil. Paladins carry swords for a reason man.

If a monster (or a person) is trying to kill you, you can use reasonable force in self defence (yes, a gun, sword or fireball) to protect your own life or that of someone else. Yes; this includes lethal force (if such force is proportional to the threat).

This is identical in the real world, where self defence is a defence to murder. It's why we have defence forces. The use of force in proportional self defence is not evil (nor is it good mind you).

When the adventurers get to town, and discover that a dragon is terrorising the town, they (acting for the town) can use reasonable and proportional force to stop that terror in defence of that town. Unless the dragon is happy to leave the town alone, then this is almost certainly going to wind up being lethal force.

When Orcs raid the villiage later on, the PCs can respond with lethal force against those Orcs. The can lead an assault on the Orcs headquarters and slay Orcs left and right.

When the PCs descend into a dank cave, and are beset by undead monsters, crazy abberations, demons, and monsterous humanoids trying to kill them, the PCs are totally OK using force (yes lethal force) in self defence.

Killing is not (in and of itself) evil. Police officers are not 'evil' when they are forced to shoot a bank robber, nor are members of the Defence Forces when forced to kill invading people in defence of the country they are sworn to protect.

Look around you. In every jurisdiction in the world, violence (even killing) in proportionate self defence is lawful, and not sanctioned as immoral. Thats a rule that almost universally crosses all cultures and all legal systems throughout history.

Unless DnD morality is different (for some strange reason) of course.

[Skylivedk]

Don't forget that several of the Conjuration summoning spells have the same drawback. For example, with Conjure Fey, Conjure Elemental, and Summon Greater Demon, if you lose Concentration or the summoned creature succeeds on a saving throw, the summoner loses control and they turn hostile.

I'd say summoning a Demon and then losing control so that it goes on a murderous rampage is just as "evil" as raising undead and then losing control so they go on a murderous rampage.

Well, slightly less so since it disappears within a minute or you losing control. Also, at least for warlocks, your patron throwing a demon at you and your enemies when you need help is way easier to RP as not being on purpose (I might go for that in my very next session) than finding corpses to enslave with murderous intent.


Well don't forget that summoning demons is strictly conjuration and its not only evil, its downright dangerous. Control over the demon is limited and creating paths for demons to enter the material realm is beyond taboo. Out of the Abyss comes to mind when discussing the consequences at an extreme.

And the world is about a balance of positive and negative energy. The use of negative energy in magic is not evil for its own sake despite its state.

I'm very curious about the pathway part. Where do you find that? I see a great potential for creating a seriously messed up situation for my character and my group; and who doesn't love that?


As usual, I feel like pointing out that you can be a necromancer without ever raising a single undead creature. That being said, D&D does seem to carefully dodge the implications of summoning creatures from other planes to fight and die for you. I also don't see why raising undead needs to be always evil, either. Most people who do that probably don't do it for wholesome reasons and society around them won't look upon it kindly. But that's not the same as slapping an Evil label on it and calling it a day.

Our priest of Waukeen tried this argument (basically to herald an Undead Age of Industry). Our gnome Wizard did talk him out of it... For the time being. I think Malifice had the strongest point here: it's explicitly mentioned to be evil in the book. Your settings can of course be different and your character can easily be ignorant of the workings of the planes, believing all this "evil, murderous energy" is hogwash, but we as players KNOW that that isn't true in the standard settings.


Killing in self defence is not evil. Paladins carry swords for a reason man.

If a monster (or a person) is trying to kill you, you can use reasonable force in self defence (yes, a gun, sword or fireball) to protect your own life or that of someone else. Yes; this includes lethal force (if such force is proportional to the threat).

This is identical in the real world, where self defence is a defence to murder. It's why we have defence forces. The use of force in proportional self defence is not evil (nor is it good mind you).

When the adventurers get to town, and discover that a dragon is terrorising the town, they (acting for the town) can use reasonable and proportional force to stop that terror in defence of that town. Unless the dragon is happy to leave the town alone, then this is almost certainly going to wind up being lethal force.

When Orcs raid the villiage later on, the PCs can respond with lethal force against those Orcs. The can lead an assault on the Orcs headquarters and slay Orcs left and right.

When the PCs descend into a dank cave, and are beset by undead monsters, crazy abberations, demons, and monsterous humanoids trying to kill them, the PCs are totally OK using force (yes lethal force) in self defence.

Killing is not (in and of itself) evil. Police officers are not 'evil' when they are forced to shoot a bank robber, nor are members of the Defence Forces when forced to kill invading people in defence of the country they are sworn to protect.

Look around you. In every jurisdiction in the world, violence (even killing) in proportionate self defence is lawful, and not sanctioned as immoral. Thats a rule that almost universally crosses all cultures and all legal systems throughout history.

Unless DnD morality is different (for some strange reason) of course.

Yes and no. The definition of appropriate force varies wildly, even in the same country. Ie. in Denmark, a police officer has almost never been convicted of the use of excessive force even in pretty mundane situations (I remember a tractor thief being shot in the back). At the same time, in the same country, martial artists are very aware that they are at higher level of risk for excessive force use in self-defence cases because they should know better. Consistent? Not in the slightest.

By the way, this also goes for a lot of other countries with some pretty stark cases (the US had the guy shot on his stag night when he had warned, loudly, that he was complying and reaching for his driver's licence; also the kid shot on the way home from the candy store and many many other situations).

[Naanomi]

As a point of clarification... note that cosmologically Negative Energy is not evil nor unnatural; and ‘naturally occurring undead’ are a thing... just like there is naturally occurring radiation in the world... it is using it to animate corpses artificially that is Evil

[The Jack]

A 5E Wizard that felt as you do, and animated dead regularly, would be Evilly aligned.

Nicest guy in the world
Never hurt nobody
Honest and open
puts his wealth into the community
Keeps an animated skeleton around to help with the groceries he gets for the orphanedge.
EVILLY ALLIGNED

[Dragons_Ire]

Nicest guy in the world
Never hurt nobody
Honest and open
puts his wealth into the community
Keeps an animated skeleton around to help with the groceries he gets for the orphanedge.
EVILLY ALLIGNED

He's being careless, why isn't he using an Unseen Servant? It doesn't have the potential to go on a murdering spree if you lose control.

[Unoriginal]

Our priest of Waukeen tried this argument (basically to herald an Undead Age of Industry). Our gnome Wizard did talk him out of it... For the time being. I think Malifice had the strongest point here: it's explicitly mentioned to be evil in the book. Your settings can of course be different and your character can easily be ignorant of the workings of the planes, believing all this "evil, murderous energy" is hogwash, but we as players KNOW that that isn't true in the standard settings.

Well, if a Cleric of Waukeen tried that after being explained the issues, Waukeen would strip them of their power ASAP.

And probably pour herself a drink or twenty of her most expensive golden apple cider while muttering something about how dumb her worshipers seem to get whenever she's not looking.


As a point of clarification... note that cosmologically Negative Energy is not evil nor unnatural; and ‘naturally occurring undead’ are a thing... just like there is naturally occurring radiation in the world... it is using it to animate corpses artificially that is Evil

Well, with the caveat that most of those naturally occuring undead are evil beings.


Nicest guy in the world
Never hurt nobody
Honest and open
puts his wealth into the community
Keeps an animated skeleton around to help with the groceries he gets for the orphanedge.
EVILLY ALLIGNED

YES!

Someone who ****ing keeps a sapient spirit, who is hell-bent on killing everyone, enslaved long term is an evil person. They DO hurt someone, and are constantly at risk of letting it hurt more people.

It's not an Elemental who's not really sapient in its native plane and who will dissipate back into the plane when de-summoned, or a fey that can get angry and curse your bloodline . You are enslaving someone whose only desire is to lethally hurt anything that breath on the Material Plane.

You may not like the lore, and you can change it for your setting if you don't like it, but we're talking about the 5e default.


He's being careless, why isn't he using an Unseen Servant? It doesn't have the potential to go on a murdering spree if you lose control.

Unseen Servant also a much lower level spell and one which requires far less ressources.

There is NO reason to want to use a skeleton to carry groceries except if you want to enslave a potential mass murderer or if you're too ignorant to know how your own magic work.

[Willie the Duck]

PHB; Spellcasting, Page 203; sidebar:

Creating undead is NOT a good act. ONLY evil casters use such spells frequently.

The implication is that Neutral casters might use such magic occasionally, and Good casters never or almost never.

You are literally using dark 'unholy' magic, to channel the very essense of evil, into the corpse of a dead person (defiling that corpse) to create a murderous killing machine.

That's what you're doing.

If we're going to use the book text as our source, we should probably clearly delineate what points the book rules specifically address to avoid confusion. This section of text doesn't come down one way or another on the magic of animation being dark, unholy, or channeling the essence of evil (those, btw, are perfectly reasonable downstream justifications, of which I am in favor). It only states that it isn't a good act, and you'd only do so frequently if you were evil. Not a refutation of any points, just suggesting that the points be more well demarcated.


Killing in self defence is not evil. Paladins carry swords for a reason man.

General agreement, although I think it is assuming Asmotherion is making a more simplistic argument than he probably is. I think what he is getting at is that PCs routinely use means otherwise thought of as wildly dangerous and against the social norm in the achievement of the greater good. Given that the distinction between fireball and animate dead (both of which have obvious disastrous or risk to social function if performed in the middle of Townsville, but one of which is apparently acceptably non-evil if used in the function of the greater good down in a dungeon while the other is not) is that animating dead is somehow intrinsically evil, it's a non-trivial reasonable request to wonder about why. The 'sapient malevolent spirit' answer is a good explanation, although it also seems a little like an after-the-fact justification for what was originally just a thematic 'the zombie-master is the bad guy because that's the way the genre-fiction has always been' justification.

[The Jack]

Tiny servant has a weight limit among other factors that favour animate dead (casting time, numbers active, duration)

Animate dead's risks can be mitigated with proper storage and a lack of weapons.


contradictions

A skeleton cannot be sapient if its only desire is malice.

A man doesnt become evil for owning a pit bull, nor should he become evil for having a skeleton. Unlike a pit bull, a skeleton is far more controlable and is less of a danger unarmed.
A person who neglects their child is doing wrong, a wizard who neglects tgeir skeleton is doing wrong, but just like the child or the pit bull a properly looked after skeleton is of no harm to anyone.
Like a robot, a skeleton is a tool. It isnt a person. It's programmed, The contoller is responsible for its actions, but if it takes no bad actions and careful care ensures it will take no bad actions,surely it's not a bad thing?

[Sigreid]

On a somewhat related note my CN wizard found instructions on how to make an animated scarecrow our last session. After reading that it involved binding evil spirits to the construct he said "well, I'm not doing that". And unlike animated dead, scarecrows can't go rogue while you live.

[Unoriginal]

Tiny servant has a weight limit among other factors that favour animate dead (casting time, numbers active, duration)

That doesn't justify the risks to others nor the enslavement.



Animate dead's risks can be mitigated with proper storage and a lack of weapons.

Ah, yes, keep your slave spirit in a cell and make sure it doesn't have a weapon so it'll waste a few handful of seconds finding something to hit people with.




A skeleton cannot be sapient if its only desire is malice.

There is no contradiction. Yes, you can have sapience and only one desire. Being sapient implies being able to act based on jugement and self-awareness, it doesn't preclude having unmitigated hatred for anything.



A man doesnt become evil for owning a pit bull, nor should he become evil for having a skeleton.

A man in the D&D universe who keeps a dangerous killer enslaved for personal convenience has a behavior fitting one of the evil alignments. Skeletons aren't animals, agressive or otherwise, nor are they robots.


On a somewhat related note my CN wizard found instructions on how to make an animated scarecrow our last session. After reading that it involved binding evil spirits to the construct he said "well, I'm not doing that". And unlike animated dead, scarecrows can't go rogue while you live.

Indeed. Specifically, it requires the spirit of a slain evil creature.

Did your group steal an hag's notes or the like, by the way?

[Willie the Duck]

Tiny servant has a weight limit among other factors that favour animate dead (casting time, numbers active, duration)
Animate dead's risks can be mitigated with proper storage and a lack of weapons.

This is the conundrum of why is this tool judged by how it is used, while the other is inherently evil?

That said, the apparent* answer is 'because the book says it is. Malevolent spirit, yada-yada.'
*Have not checked, assuming people are right about what book says.


A skeleton cannot be sapient if its only desire is malice.

The confluence of sapience, free-will, and inherent evil (of undead and demons, or more broadly) is one of the insolvable conundrums of D&D alignment.


A man doesnt become evil for owning a pit bull, nor should he become evil for having a skeleton. Unlike a pit bull, a skeleton is far more controlable and is less of a danger unarmed.
A person who neglects their child is doing wrong, a wizard who neglects tgeir skeleton is doing wrong, but just like the child or the pit bull a properly looked after skeleton is of no harm to anyone.

If the skeleton is merely a dangerous tool, you are absolutely right. It becomes an issue of is this wizard can be reasonably precautious given the world they live in, where they are keeping said tool, the consequences of failure, and whether society should be trusting them with this power (pretty much the same issues we have IRL with specific individual owning a firearm or maybe heavy weaponry), plus some practical social issues (as I touched on before, making a society where you can verify that wizard A's skeleton B is former person C who consented to this post-mortem situation is a challenge to a premodern society).

D&D 5e default is presuming that there is an inherent difference in a animated skeleton as opposed to a pitbull. Something about the malevolent spirit that I agree breaks down with rigorous analysis. But that's where I think the hand-waving is (the justification of why they are different), not the difference itself. Skeletons are different from pitbulls. Why? Because they are (something, something, malevolent spirit). Pay no attention to the incongruity behind the curtain, the downstream logic is relatively reasonable. :smalltongue:

[The Jack]

RE scarecrows

So it obeys you and cant go rogue or do things you dont want it to do?

Look, you've got an oppertunity to indenture evil spirits into a potentially noble cause. Minus one potential badguy and plus one ally. The correct choice would have of course been to take the spell, providing that you can trust the dm, which i wouldn't.

[Sigreid]

RE scarecrows

So it obeys you and cant go rogue or do things you dont want it to do?

Look, you've got an oppertunity to indenture evil spirits into a potentially noble cause. Minus one potential badguy and plus one ally. The correct choice would have of course been to take the spell, providing that you can trust the dm, which i wouldn't.

The creation ritual o got starts with summoning a powerful evil spirit, or murdering a powerful evil person to bind to the scarecrow. Better to leave them in Hell, the Abyss or whatever.

[The Jack]

Oh the pains of phone posting...

Unoriginal
Skeletons dont pick up weapons if they arent risen with one or arent told to pick one up.
Thus most commoners have good odds at defending themselves. Large dogs are more dangerous.

If they're malicious theres no ethical issue in controlling them. A prison warden isnt evil by virtue of control alone.
They're not sentient. I dont want to sound like a brutal colonial, but controlling them is better than not, and destroying them is a wasteful.

[Unoriginal]

Adding this here since I didn't see your edit before:


a properly looked after skeleton is of no harm to anyone.

Except to the skeleton.



Like a robot, a skeleton is a tool. It isnt a person. It's programmed

Wrong. Utterly wrong.

A skeleton has free will. You're *suppressing* its free will with magic, and ordering it around.



The contoller is responsible for its actions

The controller is responsible for their actions. If their actions regularly includes forcing a potential mass murderer to obey their every command, it's their choice, but they better be ready for the consequences later on.

Consequences that will likely be a dip in the Styx, being digested by the Abyss, or all the other fanciful fates that await new residents of Hades, Pandemonium, Gehena, Acheron or Carceri.


but if it takes no bad actions and careful care ensures it will take no bad actions,surely it's not a bad thing?

"Don't worry, I just have to expend a spell slot to make sure my slave don't kill anyone today."



RE scarecrows

So it obeys you and cant go rogue or do things you dont want it to do?

Look, you've got an oppertunity to indenture evil spirits into a potentially noble cause. Minus one potential badguy and plus one ally. The correct choice would have of course been to take the spell, providing that you can trust the dm, which i wouldn't.

Gods and angels, you're literally advocating for the enslavement of people via evil magic.



Skeletons dont pick up weapons if they arent risen with one or arent told to pick one up.

Wrong.


Although they lack the intellect they possessed in life, skeletons aren't mindless. Rather than break its limbs attempting to batter its way through an iron door, a skeleton tries the handle first. If that doesn't work, it searches for another way through or around the obstacle.


DMG p. 272.

Skeletons are capable of using tools, and to try to find them when they lack it.



If they're malicious theres no ethical issue in controlling them.

That's ridiculous. Unethical behavior applied to malicious people doesn't suddenly become ethical. There's a reason why



A prison warden isnt evil by virtue of control alone.

A prison warden isn't a slaver. They aren't allowed



They're not sentient. [QUOTE=The Jack;23686551]

They are.

They are limited in their sentience, to be sure, but they do have a sense of self and an intellect, however little it is.

[QUOTE]This energy motivates a skeleton to move and think in a rudimentary fashion, though only as a pale imitation of the way it behaved in life. An animated skeleton retains no connection to its past, although resurrecting a skeleton restores it body and soul, banishing the hateful undead spirit that empowers it.


Skeletons raised by spell are bound to the will of their creator.


Independent skeletons temporarily or permanently free of a master's control...

DMG p. 272.

[The Jack]

The creation ritual o got starts with summoning a powerful evil spirit, or murdering a powerful evil person to bind to the scarecrow. Better to leave them in Hell, the Abyss or whatever.

The former is reckless but the latter..
You were going to kill them anyway.

[Sigreid]

The former is reckless but the latter..
You were going to kill them anyway.

Well, CN...I was really only going to kill them anyway if they started with me...or my goodie goodie friends asked me to help them do it.

[The Jack]

Adding this here since I didn't see your edit before:



Like a robot, a skeleton is a tool. It isnt a person. It's programmed,

Wrong. Utterly wrong.

A skeleton has free will. You're *suppressing* its free will with magic, and ordering it around.

Hardly worse than training a horse to ride or farming eggs from chickens.





Consequences that will likely be a dip in the Styx, being digested by the Abyss, or all the other fanciful fates that await new residents of Hades, Pandemonium, Gehena, Acheron or Carceri.

Why though? You might as well send me to hell for picking my nose.



"Don't worry, I just have to expend a spell slot to make sure my slave don't kill anyone today."

Not very different from keeping a dog fed regularly.
Skeletons don't need anything either. They're very easy to store so you dont need to spend a spell slot every day.



Gods and angels, you're literally advocating for the enslavement of people via evil magic.
I'd prefer to think of it as an enforced rehabilitation technique that works exclusively with grevious offenders.
And its hardly worse than hell

[Malifice]

Nicest guy in the world
Never hurt nobody
Honest and open
puts his wealth into the community
Keeps an animated skeleton around to help with the groceries he gets for the orphanedge.
EVILLY ALLIGNED

Yep. Evilly aligned.

Mr Nice guy is going to Hell on death. He's a monster who intentionally and willfully uses magic clearly and unambiguously labelled 'unholy and dark', to channel the very essence of evil to create murderous monsters who want nothing more than to kill every member of that same community, via desecrating and defiling the bodies of the dead.

I'd also label him evil if he did all the above in your list and was a frequent necrophilliac. Also an act of defiling the dead, and one that (as repulsive as it is) is nowhere near as bad as the level of desecration he's performing by forcing evil spirits into peoples corpses using dark unholy magic.

As a good man, dabbling in dark unholy magic, to willfully channel the very essence of evil into a corpse, desecrating it, and creating a murderous monster should be abhorrent to him. Not something he just does all the time 'because'. If such a thing was not abhorrent to him, he's not a good man.

It would be the sort of thing he would only engage in as an absolute last resort, and even then only infrequently.

[The Jack]

By that logic, a child rapist can to the seven heaven for frequent use of cure wounds

[Unoriginal]

Hardly worse than training a horse or farming eggs from chickens.

[...]

Not very different from keeping a dog fed regularly.

Undead are not animals, and you're not mentally compelling animals to obey you, you're teaching them that going along with your demands get them food and protection from the elements.



Skeletons don't need anything either. They're very easy to store so you dont need to spend a spell slot every day.

How economical! And how are you storing them, if I may ask? Imprisoning them in stone tombs until you need them?




I'd prefer to think of it as the enforced rehabilitation technique that works exclusively on people with grevious offenders.

Yes, I'm sure you'd prefer to think that.

Using the compelled spirit of someone you killed to make a bunch of straw and clothe move, while staying utterly malevolent if I might add, doesn't rehabilitate anyone.

[Sigreid]

By that logic, a child rapist can to the seven heaven for frequent use of cure wounds

I think for a lot of people it's more "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".

[The Jack]

I think for a lot of people it's more "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".

Yeah I'm really wondering what kind of background everyone has here. It sounds like real world teachings have some mighty sway on people.

[Malifice]

If we're going to use the book text as our source, we should probably clearly delineate what points the book rules specifically address to avoid confusion. This section of text doesn't come down one way or another on the magic of animation being dark, unholy, or channeling the essence of evil

No, you find that text under the entry of Skeleton, Zombie and Undead [type] in the Monster Manual. Go read the text on those monsters (and that creature type).

Under both entries it is clearly stated that the magic that animates both types of creatures (and Undead generally) is 'unholy, dark and evil.'

Additionally the text in the DMG re the Negative Energy plane tells us that its the 'energy' used and channelled when undead are created on the Prime Material.

Im citing rules text here. Paraphrased, but go read it for yourself. It's unambiguous.


General agreement, although I think it is assuming Asmotherion is making a more simplistic argument than he probably is. I think what he is getting at is that PCs routinely use means otherwise thought of as wildly dangerous and against the social norm in the achievement of the greater good.


And such PCs are not good.

The PC that frequently uses murder, torture and similar methods to achieve a 'greater good' is evil. He may very well be a protagonist, but he's an evil one like Titus Pullo, the Punisher, Dexter, Tony Soprano, Walter White, Steel Brightblade, Raistlin Majere, Carol from TWD (although shes recently turned good again in recent seasons) and so forth.

[Sigreid]

Yeah I'm really wondering what kind of background everyone has here. It sounds like real world teachings have some mighty sway on people.

Of course. People tend to have difficulty placing themselves in a different moral place. It's pretty common to judge ancestors by ever shifting modern standards, and the ancestors never come off looking good.

[Malifice]

By that logic, a child rapist can to the seven heaven for frequent use of cure wounds

What? Can you point me to the rules text that supports that?

I can point you to the rules text that clearly states 'Animating the dead is an evil act, and no good person animates dead often'. It's in the PHB.

Accordingly in 5E (as I stated earlier) if your Wizard frequently animates dead, he cannot be good, and is almost certainly evil.

[Unoriginal]

By that logic, a child rapist can to the seven heaven for frequent use of cure wounds

No?

YOU are the one claiming that someone who is "the nicest guy ever" is not evil despite acting utterly evilly with his spirit-enslaving, undead-making-and-storing activities.

Casting Cure Wounds doesn't mean you're doing something good. An hobgoblin cleric will use Cure Wounds on their allies many time when the soldiers are attacking a town, killing thousands and forcing the survivors to submit.


What? Can you point me to the rules text that supports that?

I can point you to the rules text that clearly states 'Animating the dead is an evil act, and no good person animates dead often'. It's in the PHB.

Accordingly in 5E (as I stated earlier) if your Wizard frequently animates dead, he cannot be good, and is almost certainly evil.

Just a nitpick, but the book says "creating undead is not a good act, and only evil people do it regularly."

Otherwise, you're right.

[Malifice]

Yeah I'm really wondering what kind of background everyone has here. It sounds like real world teachings have some mighty sway on people.

I think you missed the point of the post you were quoting.

[Rafaelfras]

It is also important to bring up the entries of the skeleton and zombie from the Monster Manual

Skeletons:


Skeletons arise when animated by dark magic. They heed the summons of spellcasters who call them from
their stony tombs and ancient battlefields, or rise of their own accord in places saturated with death and loss,
awakened by stirrings of nycromantic energy or the presence of corrupting evil.
Animated Dead: Whatever sinister force awakens a skeleton infuses its bones with a dark vitality, adhering
joint to joint and reassembling dismantled limbs. This energy motivates a skeleton to move and think in a
rudimentary fashion, though only as a pale imitation of the way it behaved in life. An animated skeleton retains
no connection to its past, although resurrecting a skeleton restores it body and soul, banishing the hateful
undead spirit that empowers it.

Zombies:


Dark Servants: Sinister necromantic magic infuses the remains of the dead, causing them to rise as
zombies that do their creator's bidding without fear or hesitation. They move with a jerky, uneven gait, clad
in the moldering apparel they wore when put to rest, and carrying the stench of decay. Most zombies are made from humanoid remains, though the flesh and bones of any formerly living creature can be imbued with
a semblance of life. Necromantic magic, usually from spells, animates a zombie. Some zombies rise spontaneously when dark magic saturates an area. Once turned into a zombie, a creature can't be restored to life except by
powerful magic, such as a resurrection spell. A zombie retains no vestiges of its former self, its mind devoid of thought and imagination. A zombie left without orders simply stands in place and rots unless something comes along that it can kill. The magic animating a zombie imbues it with evil, so left without purpose, it attacks any living creature it encounters.

So, these are the creatures you are making with animate dead. While it is clear that these undeads have nothing to do with their former selfs (the soul is free, they have no memory or tie with their former self etc) It is very clear that they arent also just an animated object. There is a dark force, an evil spirit ihabitating the body.
Their descriptions make very clear why it is an evil act to create then

[Unoriginal]

Of course. People tend to have difficulty placing themselves in a different moral place. It's pretty common to judge ancestors by ever shifting modern standards, and the ancestors never come off looking good.

People have a lot of difficulty placing themselves in D&D's moral place, it seems.

There is no point where frequently and regularly creating and enslaving undead doesn't fall under "tak[ing] what [you] want, within the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty, or order", "do[ing] whatever they can get away with, without compassion or qualms", or "act[ing] with arbitrary violence, spurred by [your] greed, hatred, or bloodlust".

Ergo, the typical behavior of a person who regularly creates and enslave undead fits the description of one of the evil alignments.


People gives far too much importance to alignment, anyway. But eh, whatever. This ain't my table to eat on.



So, these are the creatures you are making with animate dead. While it is clear that these undeads have nothing to do with their former selfs (the soul is free, they have no memory or tie with their former self etc) It is very clear that they arent also just an animated object. There is a dark force, an evil spirit ihabitating the body.
Their descriptions make very clear why it is an evil act to create then

Thank you. I should have brought up the Zombie entry earlier.

[The Jack]

Under both entries it is clearly stated that the magic that animates both types of creatures (and Undead generally) is 'unholy, dark and evil.'

Additionally the text in the DMG re the Negative Energy plane tells us that its the 'energy' used and channelled when undead are created on the Prime Material.

Im citing rules text here. Paraphrased, but go read it for yourself. It's unambiguous.
Skepticism is mandatory when someone refers to something as evil. Taxes, money, blue clothes, left handed writing, genitals, opinionated women,public affection, opening the door for a lady, not opening the door for a lady, boxing, eating meat, showing the soles of your feet, hand gestures, rock music, boy bands, alcohol, playing football in a park, radio, tv, computers, D&D, video games, the french, the english, pinapples on pizza, english being unphonetic, double negatives, the poor, the rich, Samuel L Jackson, flags, men, public transport..
A full list would be trully amazing.

Undead are described here as evil 'Cause it sounds wicked sick and its a game so sounding cool is good.

[Sigreid]

People have a lot of difficulty placing themselves in D&D's moral place, it seems.

There is no point where frequently and regularly creating and enslaving undead doesn't fall under "tak[ing] what [you] want, within the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty, or order", "do[ing] whatever they can get away with, without compassion or qualms", or "act[ing] with arbitrary violence, spurred by [your] greed, hatred, or bloodlust".

Ergo, your typical behavior fits the description of one of the evil alignments.


People gives far too much importance to alignment, anyway. But eh, whatever. This ain't my table to eat on.

Hope you dont literally mean my typical behavior. I'm pretty solidly CN. Not out to cause harm, but little respect for traditional authority.

[Unoriginal]

Skepticism is mandatory when someone refers to something as evil. Taxes, money, blue clothes, left handed writing, genitals, opinionated women,public affection, opening the door for a lady, not opening the door for a lady, boxing, eating meat, showing the soles of your feet, hand gestures, rock music, boy bands, alcohol, playing football in a park, radio, tv, computers, D&D, video games, the french, the english, pinapples on pizza, english being unphonetic, double negatives, the poor, the rich, Samuel L Jackson, flags, men, public transport..
A full list would be trully amazing.

Undead are described here as evil 'Cause it sounds wicked sick and its a game so sounding cool is good.

Ah, yes. Silly me, I forgot how morally relative "killing people because they exist" and "turning beings into puppet against their will" were.

Skepticism isn't denial of evidence. It's examining the evidences.

Frankly, trying to pretend that wannabe-mass murderers or slavers are just called evil "'Cause it sounds wicked sick and its a game so sounding cool is good" is pretty insulting to the intellect of anyone reading your post.



Hope you dont literally mean my typical behavior. I'm pretty solidly CN. Not out to cause harm, but little respect for traditional authority.

What? No, I was talking about the typical behavior of a "you" who regularly creates undead. I said so. I'll edit it to make it clearer.

[Willie the Duck]

Yeah I'm really wondering what kind of background everyone has here. It sounds like real world teachings have some mighty sway on people.

This is not a good road to go down.


No,

I don't know what you're even saying no to. I stated, "This section of text doesn't come down one way or another on the magic of animation being dark, unholy, or channeling the essence of evil," and that is unambiguously true.


you find that text under the entry of Skeleton, Zombie and Undead [type] in the Monster Manual. Go read the text on those monsters (and that creature type).

Under both entries it is clearly stated that the magic that animates both types of creatures (and Undead generally) is 'unholy, dark and evil.'

Additionally the text in the DMG re the Negative Energy plane tells us that its the 'energy' used and channelled when undead are created on the Prime Material.

Im citing rules text here. Paraphrased, but go read it for yourself. It's unambiguous.

Great. It's in the rulebook, but it's not in the part of the rulebook you quoted, which was the point. You included one section of the rule text, and then made an argument based on a wholly other section of the rulebook you for some reason did not include. That confused the issue and made it appear like you were making wild and unsupported extrapolations from the text your referenced, when in fact your position was* well supported by text you for some reason didn't include. I thought that to be a bad idea. I sure can go read it myself*. You also could have included it, and made it more clear where your additional points had come from. I was making a suggestion for your benefit, not a refutation.
*At some point. I am at work. I've generally worked under the assumption that people stating that something is in the books are telling the truth.




And such PCs are not good.

The PC that frequently uses murder, torture and similar methods to achieve a 'greater good' is evil. He may very well be a protagonist, but he's an evil one like Titus Pullo, the Punisher, Dexter, Tony Soprano, Walter White, Steel Brightblade, Raistlin Majere, Carol from TWD (although shes recently turned good again in recent seasons) and so forth.

They sure could be, but that is not the point I was making. I was comparing/distinguishing the moral difference between a skeleton and a fireball, not calling all PCs evil.

[Sigreid]

Ah, yes. Silly me, I forgot how morally relative "killing people because they exist" and "turning beings into puppet against their will" were.

Skepticism isn't denial of evidence. It's examining the evidences.



What? No, I was talking about the typical behavior of a "you" who regularly creates undead. I said so. I'll edit it to make it clearer.
I know, I was teasing a little and it's hard to do right on the phone. 😁

[Malifice]

Undead are described here as evil 'Cause it sounds wicked sick and its a game so sounding cool is good.

No, Undead are described as evil because in this game we are discussing they absolutely cosmologically objectively speaking are evil. They're literally powered by the very dark energy of 'cosmic evil' itself, woven into the corpse via magic that is described (again in the game we are talking about here) as 'unholy, dark and sinister', to create dark murderous killing machines.

In a different game, maybe undead are pleasant creatures who are not powered by cosmic evil, but instead by jellybeans, and only exist to spread cupcakes, rainbows and puppies.

Not in DnD however. It's explicitly the exact opposite.

[Malifice]

This is not a good road to go down.



I don't know what you're even saying no to. I stated, "This section of text doesn't come down one way or another on the magic of animation being dark, unholy, or channeling the essence of evil," and that is unambiguously true.

Thats why I was giving you the additional text, and where I was getting it from (the unholy, dark and evil bits).

The rules of 5e (in text from the PHB, DMG, MM) are fairly clear and unambiguous on the 'undead are evil monsters, it's evil to create them, it uses dark unholy magic, and only an evil person would ever create them with any frequency.'

Ergo, if you're a 5E character or NPC and you create undead frequently, you're evil.

[The Jack]

But it doesnt kill things 'because they exist' when controlled, and while that doesnt entirely moot the point;

You dont enslave a non sentient thing. A crowbar, car or loudspeaker arent enslaved. The undead do not feel exhaustion, they do not need to eat, they do not tire. They have no drive for anything other than death, they're not even sadistic about it.
They have nothing of life. They're tools given will by energy. Perhpas they're not even individuals, they all share the same energy. Maybe you're not even overriding their will, the negative energy is the overide.

Animated dead arent evil dead people. They're animations using a powerful enerfy

[Unoriginal]

No, Undead are described as evil because in this game we are discussing they absolutely cosmologically objectively speaking are evil. They're literally powered by the very dark energy of 'cosmic evil' itself, woven into the corpse via magic that is described (again in the game we are talking about here) as 'unholy, dark and sinister', to create dark murderous killing machines.

And descriptions of what they are aside, what they are described as doing shows them as utterly evil too.

It's like, say, a Chain Devil. Sure, just saying "they're evil 'cause they're a devil" would raise the question: "what do they do that's so evil."

Thing is, the fact that question should be asked doesn't allows one to go "Chain Devils aren't evil, they're just called that to make the game sound cool/because the writers need an arbitrary bad guy".

Because the answer of this question is: "Chain Devils are enthusiastic torturers who make everyone they can get their hands on suffer daily, horrific abuses."

[Malifice]

But it doesnt kill things 'because they exist' when controlled, and while that doesnt entirely moot the point;

You dont enslave a non sentient thing. A crowbar, car or loudspeaker arent enslaved. The undead do not feel exhaustion, they do not need to eat, they do not tire. They have no drive for anything other than death, they're not even sadistic about it.
They have nothing of life. They're tools given will by energy. Perhpas they're not even individuals, they all share the same energy. Maybe you're not even overriding their will, the negative energy is the overide.

...Is the same deluded rationale advanced by an in game wizard when he animates undead.

'They're only tools' he mutters to himself as the cold, unholy and forbidden dark magic channels through him, and the twisted words of the black speech brings the dead to life. The Wizard trembled as he repeated the name of the Demon Lord of Undeath thrice over: 'Orcus; lord of the dead, grant my servant your power!'. The monsters eyes flared up with a burning red light, now an inhabitant in the shattered corpse of a creature once alive, once in love, and once full of hope... now a husk filled with an evil spirit, hungry to snuff out all living things around it; its mouth open in a snarl. For a moment our Wizard could swear he could faintly hear the far off laughter of the denizens of the Abyss...

He probably also rationalizes that he does so 'for the greater good' to help the townsfolk out, and other (to him) altruistic reasons as he looks down on his monster, the cold numbing sensation of evil magic still faintly receding from his body.

Meanwhile he condemns his soul to Hell.

[Thrudd]

Skepticism is mandatory when someone refers to something as evil. Taxes, money, blue clothes, left handed writing, genitals, opinionated women,public affection, opening the door for a lady, not opening the door for a lady, boxing, eating meat, showing the soles of your feet, hand gestures, rock music, boy bands, alcohol, playing football in a park, radio, tv, computers, D&D, video games, the french, the english, pinapples on pizza, english being unphonetic, double negatives, the poor, the rich, Samuel L Jackson, flags, men, public transport..
A full list would be trully amazing.

Undead are described here as evil 'Cause it sounds wicked sick and its a game so sounding cool is good.

All those things you listed are real things in the real world, discussing how "good" and "evil" are applied to real-world things is not relevant to fictional cosmologies. Undead are not real and the morality of their creation and existence relies entirely on how the setting describes them. The setting says they are spirits from a plane of negative/death energy, often inhabiting corpses, desiring to kill and sometimes devour any/all sentient beings. They aren't part of an ecosystem, they aren't in the natural food chain, they are something that does not naturally occur or belong on the material plane at all (hence druids' dislike of them). Controlling or enslaving undead that are already wandering around instead of destroying them might be morally gray. Actually creating new ones seems like a very selfish and short-sighted thing to do, unless your goal is the wanton destruction of sentient life, regardless of how individually powerful any particular skeleton or zombie might be. And usually a disregard for life or an actual desire to destroy life on the part of a human are things judged "evil", in the game and in real life. Someone regularly animating dead, for any purpose, is at best irresponsibly short sighted, likely uncaring/purely self-interested, and possibly fully malevolent. To say that someone else's setting is different, so "animated dead are totally neutral and fine, and that's how it should be", is irrelevant to the discussion of the default D&D setting.

[Rafaelfras]

Its also important to note they are being created by a SPELL. Its not an unintentional or accidental act.
It has a formula, material components, a rite. The caster KNOWS EXACTLY what kind of energy he is working with, what kind of spirits he calls upon, he may be ignorant of what the end result will be in the first time he cast it, but not after that.
Creating a undead is a very conscious act, and the claim "i dont know what i was doing/ didnt knew it was wrong" does not apply in this case specially if you are a wizard, where you cast only what you can learn and understand

[Unoriginal]

But it doesnt kill things 'because they exist' when controlled

Great, you created something, and now you have the choice between being complicit of murder or being a slaver.

This method of cheap labor is so ethically-neutral and hand-washing, isn't it?



The undead do not feel exhaustion, they do not need to eat, they do not tire.

Nothing about lacking those things preclude sentience.



They have no drive for anything other than death, they're not even sadistic about it.

Wrong.



resurrecting a skeleton restores it body and soul, banishing the hateful undead spirit that empowers it.

The evil spirit is fully capable of hatred. And it does hate dem living.



They have nothing of life. They're tools given will by energy.

Thank you for destroying your own argument.

If something has a will, it is not a tool.


Maybe you're not even overriding their will, the negative energy is the overide.

The negative energy is explicitly said to give them the will.

I don't know what you're trying to achieve by presenting things that can be disproven by, you know, reading the book.



Animated dead arent evil dead people. They're animations using a powerful enerfy

They are evil spirits, who explicitly have a will on their own, and a sense of self (although admittedly little of it)


Its also important to note they are being created by a SPELL. Its not an unintentional or accidental act.
It has a formula, material components, a rite. The caster KNOWS EXACTLY what kind of energy he is working with, what kind of spirits he calls upon, he may be ignorant of what the end result will be in the first time he cast it, but not after that.
Creating a undead is a very conscious act, and the claim "i dont know what i was doing/ didnt knew it was wrong" does not apply in this case specially if you are a wizard, where you cast only what you can learn and understand


Well, as I pointed out earlier in this thread, there ARE accidental/natural occurrences of Undead. And they're nearly always the restult and the cause of horrible tragedies or horrifying acts.

So someone who set out to create an Undead, on top of everything you said, is also someone who see the times Undead monsters show up and start killing people and go "eh, I can do it too".

[ProsecutorGodot]

But it doesnt kill things 'because they exist' when controlled, and while that doesnt entirely moot the point;

You dont enslave a non sentient thing. A crowbar, car or loudspeaker arent enslaved. The undead do not feel exhaustion, they do not need to eat, they do not tire. They have no drive for anything other than death, they're not even sadistic about it.
They have nothing of life. They're tools given will by energy. Perhpas they're not even individuals, they all share the same energy. Maybe you're not even overriding their will, the negative energy is the overide.

Animated dead arent evil dead people. They're animations using a powerful enerfy

It's pretty explicit in the wording of Animate Dead that you have to maintain your control over the undead by force, lest they act on their own (un)natural impulses. Their impulses as undead are to "attack without mercy until destroyed" (Skeletons) and "attack any living creature it encounters ... stumble through roaring infernos, into pools of acid, and across fields littered with caltrops without hesitation" (Zombies). That's the default behavior they follow without someone to command them.

It's also worth noting that Skeletons that become free of a Necromancer's control hold some semblance of their past life. There's no concrete evidence saying how much (or what exactly) remains, but the fact that they can recall and continue behaviors that they did often in life implies that part of the soul of the original creature might even be trapped within the skeleton. This last part is mostly inference on my part, but we can't exactly call it "muscle memory" that they would continue to function in this way.

You're not wrong about them being animated with powerful energy though. A powerful and explicitly evil energy that compels them to seek and destroy living creatures until they're destroyed.

The undead themselves are Evil, whether you define them as a tool or not. Anyone who would intentionally create more of these creatures is almost certainly Evil.

[Hail Tempus]

RE scarecrows

So it obeys you and cant go rogue or do things you dont want it to do?

Look, you've got an oppertunity to indenture evil spirits into a potentially noble cause. Minus one potential badguy and plus one ally. The correct choice would have of course been to take the spell, providing that you can trust the dm, which i wouldn't. Slavery for a noble cause is still slavery. Good people don't enslave the souls/spirits of others, regardless of how noble their cause might be.

Yes, hags and the like are foul, evil beings in D&D, and killing them rarely presents a moral dilemma. But I'd love to see the contortions a good spellcaster would have to go through to then justify forcing the soul/spirit of the hag into endless slavery.

[Willie the Duck]

Skepticism is mandatory when someone refers to something as evil. <examples>
A full list would be trully amazing.
Undead are described here as evil 'Cause it sounds wicked sick and its a game so sounding cool is good.

It is a game, yes. However, ascribing it as merely " 'Cause it sounds wicked sick and its a game so sounding cool is good" is a simplification that almost sounds like your trying to imply that the designers are doing something entirely more... sophomoric I guess... than I think they are.

Undead are evil in the game such that they are acceptable targets. That's amazingly gamist, but pretending that this game (this edition or overall) is not a game with many conceits designed to facilitate it being a game runs the risk of trying to find another (perhaps more satisfying) answer that either isn't there, or is a post hoc attempt to justify the gamist answer (plus, you also stated that it's a game). Undead exist to be 'bad guys' because anyone remotely familiar with the genre will recognize them as the bad guys and even people who normally look at 'bad guys' on the horizon and ask, 'but have we seen them do any bad things?' will generally accept undead is clear and present bad guys.

On an intellectual level, I agree that it is nonsensical handwavium. Inherently evil entities that are evil without ever having done any evil, and who will unerringly commit evil if given the chance (so apparently having no free will, yet still being evil entities rather than hazards) break all sorts of real world ethical concepts.

But this is a game of genre conventions. Swords and sorcery meet schlock and B-movies, with a healthy dose of Westerns' frontier heroic everyman thrown in for good measure. Zombies and the like are always the mindless bad guys in B-horror movies that you never have to worry about killing, because you know they are bad. That's why they're being used in the movie in the first place. Same thing applies in D&D. The game wouldn't have skeletons and zombies if the game didn't need low-level 'clear and obvious acceptable targets.' Incongruities created by players deciding they wanted to use these spells to even the odds is a conflict that the game has never really resolved.

[Unoriginal]

Slavery for a noble cause is still slavery. Good people don't enslave the souls/spirits of others, regardless of how noble their cause might be.

Yes, hags and the like are foul, evil beings in D&D, and killing them rarely presents a moral dilemma. But I'd love to see the contortions a good spellcaster would have to go through to then justify forcing the soul/spirit of the hag into endless slavery.

The only time slavery is described as done by non-evil beings in 5e is by the chaotic good Djinn, and their version of "slavery" is more "they keep life-long servants, which they treat as valued friends, and it's possible for the servants to ask their Djinni lord to let them go, which the lord will agree to (even though the Djinn don't really get why anyone would want to leave the magnificence of their realms)".


It is a game, yes. However, ascribing it as merely " 'Cause it sounds wicked sick and its a game so sounding cool is good" is a simplification that almost sounds like your trying to imply that the designers are doing something entirely more... sophomoric I guess... than I think they are.

Undead are evil in the game such that they are acceptable targets. That's amazingly gamist, but pretending that this game (this edition or overall) is not a game with many conceits designed to facilitate it being a game runs the risk of trying to find another (perhaps more satisfying) answer that either isn't there, or is a post hoc attempt to justify the gamist answer (plus, you also stated that it's a game). Undead exist to be 'bad guys' because anyone remotely familiar with the genre will recognize them as the bad guys and even people who normally look at 'bad guys' on the horizon and ask, 'but have we seen them do any bad things?' will generally accept undead is clear and present bad guys.

On an intellectual level, I agree that it is nonsensical handwavium. Inherently evil entities that are evil without ever having done any evil, and who will unerringly commit evil if given the chance (so apparently having no free will, yet still being evil entities rather than hazards) break all sorts of real world ethical concepts.

But this is a game of genre conventions. Swords and sorcery meet schlock and B-movies, with a healthy dose of Westerns' frontier heroic everyman thrown in for good measure. Zombies and the like are always the mindless bad guys in B-horror movies that you never have to worry about killing, because you know they are bad. That's why they're being used in the movie in the first place. Same thing applies in D&D. The game wouldn't have skeletons and zombies if the game didn't need low-level 'clear and obvious acceptable targets.' Incongruities created by players deciding they wanted to use these spells to even the odds is a conflict that the game has never really resolved.


It's literally impossible to not have an ex post facto explanation of why Undead in a particular modern game are evil, though. Since the concept of Undead has existed before the game did.

[Rafaelfras]

Well, as I pointed out earlier in this thread, there ARE accidental/natural occurrences of Undead. And they're nearly always the restult and the cause of horrible tragedies or horrifying acts.

So someone who set out to create an Undead, on top of everything you said, is also someone who see the times Undead monsters show up and start killing people and go "eh, I can do it too".

Yes! Exactly!

The spontaneous ones are EVEN WORSE. So there is no appeal to ignorance that justifies creating more of those things.

[Throne12]

There is no such thing as good and evil. Any so called evil act. If you look at it from a different pov it can be seen as a good or neutral act. This is why I don't use ailments in my games.

If you ask people on the street " is breaking a window and stealing a medical device". People would say it a bad thing to do and it evil. But what if there was someone dying and someone broke that window and stole that device to save that person life. Is that a evil or good act.

If a necromancer use dead body's to protect a city full of innocent people does that make him evil. This necromancer doesn't keep the dead bodies going all the time and he make sure to properly dispose of them after using them. He never does anything to harm people unless his life is threaten or the city. Also if someone say I don't want him to use there dead body he won't.

Guns, swords, bomb's, and many other weapons are created for one use and that to kill things. Yes we have found more uses for them. But if some using a gun or a sword are evil cause they are using tools of killing.

This hole black and white out look is crap. How you use something should be the thing that defines if your evil or good.


The hole they are bring evil into the world makes them evil is BS too. Does a mother giving birth to a serial killer make her evil. No it doesn't.

Morals change all the time and I believe there is no set morals as all good. To do has bis opions on morals that some will agree with and some won't. So I see necromancy just as a tool for good or bad.

[Willie the Duck]

There is no such thing as good and evil. Any so called evil act. If you look at it from a different pov it can be seen as a good or neutral act.

I know at least one person who is going to take this bait. Oh well, it was a nice thread.


It's literally impossible to not have an ex post facto explanation of why Undead in a particular modern game are evil, though. Since the concept of Undead has existed before the game did.

?True, but relevant in a way I'm not clear on. Can you elaborate?
My point was not historical ordering, but whether the need for them to be evil happened first or the justification. From a game design perspective, the need for an acceptable target enemy occurred, undead were landed on (as one of the early D&D bad guy monster types), and the justification (apparently malevolent spirit or whatever for this edition) comes from that need.

[ProsecutorGodot]

There is no such thing as good and evil. Any so called evil act. If you look at it from a different pov it can be seen as a good or neutral act. This is why I don't use ailments in my games.
DND 5e, as a game and system, has objective Good and Evil. They are cosmic forces that are real tangible things. There is no point of view involved.

However, if you're running your campaign in a way that has that morally grey compass, that's fine. Your campaign doesn't have to follow the cosmology of the known universes of DND if you don't want it to.

[Hail Tempus]

If a necromancer use dead body's to protect a city full of innocent people does that make him evil. This necromancer doesn't keep the dead bodies going all the time and he make sure to properly dispose of them after using them. He never does anything to harm people unless his life is threaten or the city. Also if someone say I don't want him to use there dead body he won't. A one time creation and use of undead (which you properly dispose of afterwards) in a desperate situation might be okay for a good-aligned spellcaster, if there were no other options (like summoning an elemental, animating objects etc.). But, spell-casters have a lot of tools that are just as, if not more than, effective as creating undead. Routinely summoning undead is something only evil casters would be okay with, since they don't really care about the evil they're bringing into the world.


So I see necromancy just as a tool for good or bad. A hammer can be used to murder someone, sure. But the difference between a hammer and the undead is that a hammer won't bludgeon the neighbors if you forget to store it properly.

[Unoriginal]

There is no such thing as good and evil. Any so called evil act. If you look at it from a different pov it can be seen as a good or neutral act.

"Any so called evil act", you say?

Well alright, then. You seem more aware of those things than me. Would you mind helping me out, though? Can you please explain to me from which POV, say, kidnapping a 7-year-old kid from their home and selling them into slavery to sex traffickers when the parents can't pay how much the kidnapper demands is a "good or neutral act"?



If you ask people on the street " is breaking a window and stealing a medical device". People would say it a bad thing to do and it evil. But what if there was someone dying and someone broke that window and stole that device to save that person life. Is that a evil or good act.[QUOTE=Throne12;23686848]

Some acts' morality depends on the context. Doesn't mean *everything* is relative.

[QUOTE=Throne12;23686848]
If a necromancer use dead body's to protect a city full of innocent people does that make him evil. This necromancer doesn't keep the dead bodies going all the time and he make sure to properly dispose of them after using them. He never does anything to harm people unless his life is threaten or the city. Also if someone say I don't want him to use there dead body he won't.

If someone has to defend a city regularly, they have more efficient and more ethical ways of doing it than by enslaving evil spirits and shoving them into corpses.




Guns, swords, bomb's, and many other weapons are created for one use and that to kill things. Yes we have found more uses for them. But if some using a gun or a sword are evil cause they are using tools of killing.

If your gun or sword risk to float away and kill people on its own unless you type a specific code into your computer every day, I think most people would agree those items are evil.

And Undeads aren't tool. They are free-willed evil beings.

[The Jack]

Skeletons are evil on their own. I'll hapily conceed that. For the sake of argument, assume AD is a phenomenal spell that you'd want to use mechanially. It has no equivelent and you can't cunjure woodland beings or anything easy. AD is seen as a core spell to wizards, not a niche spell, and only the ethical barriers exist.

Is controlling evil evil? Does casting the spell have necrotic energies rub off on the caster, corrupting their thoughts and spawning new perversions? If that was the case, would you not be corrupted every time an enemy hit you with chill touch? Does the opposite happen? Do you become a painful altruist as you use positive energy, furthering yourself into lawful stupid every time you smite or cure?

Does animate undead affect the original soul in any way? note that skeletons dont need one source of bones. If it does, would keeping a criminal from hell be fair, would you be double damned for being an upity mortal who'd deny an evil soul from the order upheld by flawed dieties?

It seems like it's evil because people find it revulting abd they hate things 'unnatural' (or they really got into a paladin/cleric in an anti undead campaign)

What order of magnitude ia this evil? Theft? Vandalism? Blasphemy? Murder? Rape?

[Unoriginal]

I know at least one person who is going to take this bait. Oh well, it was a nice thread.

Eh, what can I say, I'd like to see someone try to actually defend that, for once.



?True, but relevant in a way I'm not clear on. Can you elaborate?
My point was not historical ordering, but whether the need for them to be evil happened first or the justification. From a game design perspective, the need for an acceptable target enemy occurred, undead were landed on (as one of the early D&D bad guy monster types), and the justification (apparently malevolent spirit or whatever for this edition) comes from that need.

Well my point is that aside from a need for bad guys, there is also an already existing and prevalent concept of the evil Undead, which the game can choose to follow or subvert.

Discworld's zombies aren't more evil than anyone else, for example, but it's a deliberate subversion of the "undead horde" à la Night of the Evil Dead which is the most common interpretation.

D&D follows the concept, which also requires a justification.

[The Jack]

"

And Undeads aren't tool. They are free-willed evil beings.

Nah they're slaves to overwhelming needs drawn out by stimuli. Only greater undead have anything approaching free will.

[Hail Tempus]

Skeletons are evil on their own. I'll hapily conceed that. For the sake of argument, assume AD is a phenomenal spell that you'd want to use mechanially. It has no equivelent and you can't cunjure woodland beings or anything easy. AD is seen as a core spell to wizards, not a niche spell, and only the ethical barriers exist. If Animate Dead was the coolest, most powerful spell in the game, that still wouldn't make raising the undead any less evil.

"I want that cool thing" doesn't make the cool thing in question any less evil. I'm sure sure owning a harem of enslaved concubines is an awesome experience for the slaveholder, but that doesn't make it any less evil.

Anyway, if you want to do evil things in-game, like raising the undead, just put "NE" under your character's alignment and go right ahead. Why bother trying to explain away the evil?

[Unoriginal]

Skeletons are evil on their own. I'll hapily conceed that.

Great. So you are conceding they are free-willed beings.



Is controlling evil evil?

Enslaving evil beings is still evil, yes.



Does casting the spell have necrotic energies rub off on the caster, corrupting their thoughts and spawning new perversions?

No.



If that was the case, would you not be corrupted every time an enemy hit you with chill touch?

It is not the case, making your hypothetical not a concern.



Does the opposite happen? Do you become a painful altruist as you use positive energy, furthering yourself into lawful stupid every time you smite or cure?

No.



Does animate undead affect the original soul in any way?

Aside from making resurrection magic harder, it does not.



If it does, would keeping a criminal from hell be fair, would you be double damned for being an upity mortal who'd deny an evil soul

Trapping a soul in a prison is an hell on its own.



from the order upheld by flawed dieties?

The order is not depending on deities.

Asmodeus may rule Hell as a god, but he has no control over the fact that lawful evil people end up there. He can at best convince people to act lawful evil so they end up there, because he knows which kind of mortal behavior tends to get you a trip to his realm, but he cannot change the criteria or anything.




It seems like it's evil because people find it revulting abd they hate things 'unnatural' (or they really got into a paladin/cleric in an anti undead campaign)

No, it's evil because you are enslaving beings and creating monsters who risk to kill everyone.



What order of magnitude ia this evil? Theft? Vandalism? Blasphemy? Murder? Rape?

What order of magnitude is slavery and regularly, deliberately doing something you know can endanger innocents?



Nah they're slaves to overwhelming needs drawn out by stimuli.

So is a person who just walked 3 days through the salt desert without a drop of water devoid of free will, just because their body has an overwhelming need for water drawn out by stimuli such as pain and thirst?

Undead don't just *need* to kill people. They WANT to.

[Throne12]

"Any so called evil act", you say?

Well alright, then. You seem more aware of those things than me. Would you mind helping me out, though? Can you please explain to me from which POV, say, kidnapping a 7-year-old kid from their home and selling them into slavery to sex traffickers when the parents can't pay how much the kidnapper demands is a "good or neutral act"?

[QUOTE=Throne12;23686848]
If you ask people on the street " is breaking a window and stealing a medical device". People would say it a bad thing to do and it evil. But what if there was someone dying and someone broke that window and stole that device to save that person life. Is that a evil or good act.[QUOTE=Throne12;23686848]

Some acts' morality depends on the context. Doesn't mean *everything* is relative.



If someone has to defend a city regularly, they have more efficient and more ethical ways of doing it than by enslaving evil spirits and shoving them into corpses.




If your gun or sword risk to float away and kill people on its own unless you type a specific code into your computer every day, I think most people would agree those items are evil.

And Undeads aren't tool. They are free-willed evil beings.

I cant and will not defend that Scenario. Cause I have my own bis morals and that Scenario is a horrible thing to do to that girl. My point is there can't be a true morals cause everyone thinks differently. Back in human history that was morally ok. I DONT LIKE IT but is moral at the time.


Also these undead does not have free will. Would you say any ai we have right now have free will.

[The Jack]

What order of magnitude is slavery and regularly, deliberately doing something you know can endanger innocents

By this logic driving a motor vehicle is evil.

Slavery existed in multitudes of magnitudes. From the cruel african slave triangle to indentured servants to serfs to wage slaves and -look how pampered my champion gladiator is-. Don't be rediculous.

[Hail Tempus]

So is a person who just walked 3 days through the salt desert without a drop of water devoid of free will, just because their body has an overwhelming need for water drawn out by stimuli such as pain and thirst?

Undead don't just *need* to kill people. They WANT to. At least from our modern conceptions of jurisprudence, you couldn't really hold most undead legally or morally culpable for their actions. They seem to have an uncontrollable urge to kill the living. Of course, real-life legal systems aren't designed with anything but humans in mind.

Undead are in a weird zone where they commit horribly evil acts due to their nature, rather than any sort of conscious decision. Creatures like that really only exist in fiction. Our real live analogues either commit evil acts willingly (humans) or aren't moral actors (animals*)

(*I know it's a bit more complicated for higher-intelligence animals).

[Hail Tempus]

By this logic driving a motor vehicle is evil. If you drive a motor vehicle in a reckless manner that endangers others, you can certainly be be arrested and charged with crimes like reckless endangerment. That's actually not a bad analogy for creating undead. If anything, raising undead is even worse because undead are inherently dangerous to others, while cars aren't (your Mercedes doesn't hunger for the flesh of children).

[Willie the Duck]

Skeletons are evil on their own. I'll hapily conceed that. For the sake of argument, assume AD is a phenomenal spell that you'd want to use mechanially. It has no equivelent and you can't cunjure woodland beings or anything easy. AD is seen as a core spell to wizards, not a niche spell, and only the ethical barriers exist.


I'm losing which points were supposed to assume for the sake of argument. However, I would say that seeing AD as a core spell* is probably the point of contention upon which different reasonable people might disagree. Regardless, in the game, as written, yes, everything you state is true. AD is a phenomenal** spell. There is no equivalent (for woodland beings or other more morally unquestionable options) which does what it does quite so well. It has ethical barriers. All of these are true statements or relatively reasonable assumptions. What then? Are you asking if it is reasonable? Whether we like the system as it stands? Suggestions for alteration***?
*you meant core like 'iconic and oft-used, not like 'in the PHB,' right?
**with some serious limitations which quickly get lost in most of these discussions.
**Everyone also recognizes that the game should be modified to fit the playing group, all of this is purely a discussion about the PHB base default

The base default we are describing very much does give people willing to commit a game-defined evil act a significant leg up. The designers made the decision to do that. I'm not going to call it a good or bad decision for the game, only what it is. Most Star Wars rpgs have definitely had darkside powers which are quicker avenues to power. I wouldn't call it an unusual decision.

I will acknowledge that it is a little more frustrating as other things you can do in-game as shortcuts to power (ex. stealing gold or healing potions from the local temple that also serves the poor or something) emulate real-world immoral acts, while the decision to call AD evil is an on-high decision.


It seems like it's evil because people find it revulting abd they hate things 'unnatural' (or they really got into a paladin/cleric in an anti undead campaign)

Who is this "they?"


What order of magnitude ia this evil? Theft? Vandalism? Blasphemy? Murder? Rape?

Now that, for one, is a great question! One upon which the game is pretty silent--at least I don't recall any such thing. People with books handy?


Eh, what can I say, I'd like to see someone try to actually defend that, for once.

You are not who I was thinking of.


Well my point is that aside from a need for bad guys, there is also an already existing and prevalent concept of the evil Undead, which the game can choose to follow or subvert.

Ah, okay. So agreeing (since I talked about the B-movie inspiration, and so forth)?

[saucerhead]

Postmortem communication is taboo, but postmortem enslavement is evil. It's selfish and lazy and generally mucks up the local economy. Which is why it leads to the gathering of mobs with torches, and groups of adventurers, before things get too far.

[Unoriginal]

Now that, for one, is a great question! One upon which the game is pretty silent--at least I don't recall any such thing. People with books handy?

The books don't have a concept of "order of magnitude" for alignments. The guy who hires a gang to ruin your business has just as much the neutral evil alignment as the drow who regularly tortures people for fun.

Another reason why it's clear people gives way too much importance to alignments.



You are not who I was thinking of.

I gathered that much, but I have to accept my responsibility in swallowing that hook.




Ah, okay. So agreeing (since I talked about the B-movie inspiration, and so forth)?

Well I wasn't disagreeing with you, just pointing out a related factor.

Though I would emit the hypothesis that the 5e lore writers probably went "Undead have historically been moslty evil in the past, let's use those ideas, but how do we justify it" more than "we need some bad guys, let's use undead, how are we justifying it", if you get what I mean. Because there was a deliberate effort to make 5e undead *more* evil (or more often evil) than in the previous two editions. 3.X had neutral liches and creating skeletons and zombies wasn't described as explicitly evil anywhere, as they were literally and explicitly mindless puppets.

[Naanomi]

I know I’ve been jumped on this before... and not at all intended to support any real world examples in the slightest... but... in the Great Wheel Cosmology slavery is often as much a Lawful thing (controlling others via social order in the extreme) as an Evil one. Djinn are generally Good and are described as having slaves, and slaves are part of the Egyptian afterlife scheme that is centered in the... well... Good-adjacent Arcadia. Caste systems (especially non-human ones) that include a slave caste are also often described as Lawful

[sophontteks]

In game evil isn't so much an act as it is a state of being. Evil and good are real, tangible forces that are constantly waging war.

We can't say murder is evil, for example, because its an act good creatures do all the time. Angels will kill evil creatures without any cause outside of those creatures being evil. The forces of good in d&d are a very militant force.

Undead are evil. Its not because of how they act. Its just what they are.

This is something that gets many people very mixed up. Good and evil simply do not exist IRL and things like rape do not exist in d&d. This is a fantasy world where we run around killing evil things for fun and the real life horrors associated with this kind of violence is largely absent.

So, you raise undead. You are creating evil entities in a world where all evil entities are, without a shred of doubt, evil in the purest form. This puts your character at odds with the forces of good. Good things will kill you because you have associated yourself with evil. Many won't even hesitate to slit your throat open.

No different are the conjuration spells that allow you to summon real Demons to the material world.

*Note that there is a big difference between something being evil and an evil being. Having an evil alignment is not the same as being a creature of evil.

[Unoriginal]

In game evil isn't so much an act as it is a state of being. Evil and good are real, tangible forces that are constantly waging war.

We can't say murder is evil, for example, because its an act good creatures do all the time. Angels will kill evil creatures without any cause outside of those creatures being evil. The forces of good in d&d are a very militant force.

Undead are evil. Its not because of how they act. Its just what they are.

This is something that gets many people very mixed up. Good and evil simply do not exist IRL and things like rape do not exist in d&d. This is a fantasy world where we run around killing evil things for fun and the real life horrors associated with this kind of violence is largely absent.

So, you raise undead. You are creating evil entities in a world where all evil entities are, without a shred of doubt, evil in the purest form. This puts your character at odds with the forces of good. Good things will kill you because you have associated yourself with evil. Many won't even hesitate to slit your throat open.

No different are the conjuration spells that allow you to summon real Demons to the material world.

*Note that there is a big difference between something being evil and an evil being. Having an evil alignment is not the same as being a creature of evil.

You're mixing your editions. 5e is clear: a creature only has an evil alignment if they typically do things that fit the description of one of the evil alignments, or at least try to (you don't get karma points for failing what you intended to do or being forced to not do it).

Devils, Demons and other fiends are incarnation of evil, but they still DO evil most of the time. They like doing evil, want to do evil, so they do it.

Act IS a requirement for alignment. Angels don't kill evil beings because they're the wrong shape or because they're born in a certain plane. They kill evil beings because those evil beings are actively harming others for various reasons, or trying to do so.

[sophontteks]

So you are trying to tell me that a good creature will not just kill an evil creature just because they are evil?
That they need a "just cause?" Before killing a demon?
That's just not how the game works.

The big caveat is that you said it. Demons are incarnations of evil.

[Brotherbock]

(you don't get karma points for failing what you intended to do or being forced to not do it).



Do you mean a game mechanic karma, or are you talking more theoretical? For Hindus, karma is most definitely influenced by your intentions. For Jews/Christians, 'coveting' is mostly about intent.

Oh wait, I think I just read it correctly just now. You are saying you don't get good karma for failing to do bad things. Yes, agreed :)

[Brotherbock]

So you are trying to tell me that a good creature will not just kill an evil creature just because they are evil?
That they need a "just cause?" Before killing a demon?
That's just not how the game works.

What do you mean by 'creature'? Are you saying that a good paladin will always kill an evil rogue, regardless of what the rogue is actually doing? Or are you talking just about good/evil monsters/celestials/etc.?

This is an interesting issue. As written, is it impossible for a demon to do a good act for another being? Say, the demon had a child with a human--a child who is not evil (and not 'guaranteed to become evil')--and the demon decides to save that child from a burning building, for no reason other than that the child was the demon's child.
1. Could a demon do that, in the game as written?
2. Would a good creature, knowing what the demon was trying to do, kill the demon as it was on its way to the building, because the demon is evil and the good creature won't have a chance later?
3. Would the good creature always do this, because of how the game is written? Or might the good creature let the demon go in this case?
4. Would the game mandate that the demon's child must be evil?

[sophontteks]

What do you mean by 'creature'? Are you saying that a good paladin will always kill an evil rogue, regardless of what the rogue is actually doing? Or are you talking just about good/evil monsters/celestials/etc.?

This is an interesting issue. As written, is it impossible for a demon to do a good act for another being? Say, the demon had a child with a human--a child who is not evil (and not 'guaranteed to become evil')--and the demon decides to save that child from a burning building, for no reason other than that the child was the demon's child.
1. Could a demon do that, in the game as written?
2. Would a good creature, knowing what the demon was trying to do, kill the demon as it was on its way to the building, because the demon is evil and the good creature won't have a chance later?
3. Would the good creature always do this, because of how the game is written? Or might the good creature let the demon go in this case?
4. Would the game mandate that the demon's child must be evil?
Its not the act its a state of being.
As unoriginal said. Demons are the incarnation of evil. It has nothing to do with what they do or how they act.

Of course there are exceptions. Exceptions make good storytelling. But overall good and evil entities are constantly in conflict.

[Brotherbock]

Its not the act its a state of being.
As unoriginal said. Demons are the incarnation of evil. It has nothing to do with what they do or how they act.

But that doesn't answer my question. You were indicating that good creatures needed no justification for killing evil creatures. If the good creature killed the demon before it could save the child (the good creature knows the child is in danger, knows the demon is trying to save it, and the good creature cannot save the child itself), would that be a 'good' action? Or would the good action in that case be letting the demon go save the child and escape?

It seems to me like there's a lot of room for some required justification there.

It may be in normal cases that the justification is just "the demon is gonna do more evil later". :) But that's not killing it 'for what it is', it's killing it for what it will do.

[Unoriginal]

Do you mean a game mechanic karma, or are you talking more theoretical? For Hindus, karma is most definitely influenced by your intentions. For Jews/Christians, 'coveting' is mostly about intent.

Oh wait, I think I just read it correctly just now. You are saying you don't get good karma for failing to do bad things. Yes, agreed :)

It said mostly jokingly, but you got it. Like in the Simpsons, when Sideshow Bob complains he was condemned for attempted murder because you don't get a Nobel Prize for "attempted accomplishment in science".



That's just not how the game works.

Actually, it is. You should read the alignment section of the PHB, it's all written down.



The big caveat is that you said it. Demons are incarnations of evil.

Yes. And as a result, they nearly always do actions that fit the chaotic evil alignment. Angels don't have to search long to find the just cause.


What do you mean by 'creature'? Are you saying that a good paladin will always kill an evil rogue, regardless of what the rogue is actually doing? Or are you talking just about good/evil monsters/celestials/etc.?

This is an interesting issue. As written, is it impossible for a demon to do a good act for another being? Say, the demon had a child with a human--a child who is not evil (and not 'guaranteed to become evil')--and the demon decides to save that child from a burning building, for no reason other than that the child was the demon's child.
1. Could a demon do that, in the game as written?
2. Would a good creature, knowing what the demon was trying to do, kill the demon as it was on its way to the building, because the demon is evil and the good creature won't have a chance later?
3. Would the good creature always do this, because of how the game is written? Or might the good creature let the demon go in this case?
4. Would the game mandate that the demon's child must be evil?

The alignment section is clear about that: no one will 100% always act according to one alignment.

Even demons have taboos most of them won't cross, according to the Mordenkainen's, among them consuming souls (though some demons do that with gutso, and are considered scum even by demonic (dubious) standards).

The demon could save their kid, enjoy an evening at the club without killing or hurting anyone pay someone for a service rendered without any catch or betrayal, or even be plain generous for no reason than they feel like it.

It's just that, as incarnation of chaos and evil, they will nearly always choose the chaotic evil options, as they like those options better and feels like it benefits them more.

If a demon acted in a way that changed their alignment, they would stop being a demon. The PBH says so, even, and we've seen what happen when a Devil becomes chaotic evil (or at least it's an hypothesis for Gra'azt's origins).

As for the good creature stopping the demon while the demon is trying to save their kid... well, it depends. Some good creatures consider that as horrible as a kid dying is, stopping a creature which will harm and kill thousands is more important. Others will disagree.

[Sigreid]

If a necromancer use dead body's to protect a city full of innocent people does that make him evil. This necromancer doesn't keep the dead bodies going all the time and he make sure to properly dispose of them after using them. He never does anything to harm people unless his life is threaten or the city. Also if someone say I don't want him to use there dead body he won't.



For this part it actually fits well within the limitation that only evil casters will create animated dead regularly. What you describe is someone who is only doing it as a one off to try to select the path of least harm. It would be different if he animated a bunch of undead to be the permanent security for the town. Essentially, he's making his choice in the infamous trolley test.

[Skylivedk]

Yep. Evilly aligned.

Mr Nice guy is going to Hell on death. He's a monster who intentionally and willfully uses magic clearly and unambiguously labelled 'unholy and dark', to channel the very essence of evil to create murderous monsters who want nothing more than to kill every member of that same community, via desecrating and defiling the bodies of the dead.

I'd also label him evil if he did all the above in your list and was a frequent necrophilliac. Also an act of defiling the dead, and one that (as repulsive as it is) is nowhere near as bad as the level of desecration he's performing by forcing evil spirits into peoples corpses using dark unholy magic.

As a good man, dabbling in dark unholy magic, to willfully channel the very essence of evil into a corpse, desecrating it, and creating a murderous monster should be abhorrent to him. Not something he just does all the time 'because'. If such a thing was not abhorrent to him, he's not a good man.

It would be the sort of thing he would only engage in as an absolute last resort, and even then only infrequently.

I agree with you on Animating Dead being Evil in core 5e. As you have poignantly shown and documented all the core books are unanimous in that. I've no idea why you mix necrophiliacs into this. Disgusting as I find it, I'd be hard pressed to call anything that concerns a bunch of bones and someone's weird kink evil. But to me, it's that: extremely weird and yuck (I avoid the word repulsive here due to the religious connotations). It probably helps that I'm about as religious as your nearest door knob.


For this part it actually fits well within the limitation that only evil casters will create animated dead regularly. What you describe is someone who is only doing it as a one off to try to select the path of least harm. It would be different if he animated a bunch of undead to be the permanent security for the town. Essentially, he's making his choice in the infamous trolley test.

If he didn't accidentally stumble upon the scroll/wand why would he even prepare the spell?

[Sigreid]

I agree with you on Animating Dead being Evil in core 5e. As you have poignantly shown and documented all the core books are unanimous in that. I've no idea why you mix necrophiliacs into this. Disgusting as I find it, I'd be hard pressed to call anything that concerns a bunch of bones and someone's weird kink evil. But to me, it's that: extremely weird and yuck (I avoid the word repulsive here due to the religious connotations). It probably helps that I'm about as religious as your nearest door knob.



If he didn't accidentally stumble upon the scroll/wand why would he even prepare the spell?

Maybe he has a day's warning that the raiders are coming and it's simply the best option he can think of.

[Skylivedk]

Maybe he has a day's warning that the raiders are coming and it's simply the best option he can think of.

I hope he goes straight to Wizard school, turns in his 14+ INT and gets his money back.

[Malifice]

I honestly have no idea why I engage in these ridiculous arguments.

I'm out.

[Mordaedil]

Though I would emit the hypothesis that the 5e lore writers probably went "Undead have historically been moslty evil in the past, let's use those ideas, but how do we justify it" more than "we need some bad guys, let's use undead, how are we justifying it", if you get what I mean. Because there was a deliberate effort to make 5e undead *more* evil (or more often evil) than in the previous two editions. 3.X had neutral liches and creating skeletons and zombies wasn't described as explicitly evil anywhere, as they were literally and explicitly mindless puppets.
Just wanted to point out that 3.X had a similar function, where certain spells had tags like [Evil], [Good], [Lawful] and [Chaotic] would, if used often, shunt you in the direction of that alignment. But it also wasn't explicit about how much you had to do it and also had limitations such as certain options being barred from certain alignments. But I can tell you that casting Cure Wounds was never one of those spells that adjusted your alignment. Animate dead and the various summon monster spells could. Clerics could lose their deities favor if they cast spells from opposite alignments. Only sorcerers who took celestial bloodline feat were limited to never casting evil spells though, so most sorcerers and wizards were free to slide up and down as they pleased, which is part of the frustrations with that rule in that edition.

There also used to be baelnorn, which were good elven liches that guarded particular holy sites.

At any rate, historically in D&D, you and Malifice are on the correct line here. Animating Undead is just that horrible and it fits. Curing wounded people just doesn't compare.

[Prince Vine]

To an extent I miss the older "always, often, usually" alignment system that often delineated between which creatures were inherent physical embodiments of metaphysical concepts represented by alignment (most outsiders and undead) as opposed to those that are more environmentally inclined (most humanoids).

As far as undead go, I tend to think of necrotic energy as a whole as anti-life, a very nasty bizarre and twisted element inherently destructive to the natural order. Using it in reasonable ways is nasty, brutal and shady but overall not a super terrible thing cosmically speaking.

Creating undead on the other hand is congealing anti-life into a persistant form, giving it will and mobility. A blight on the world has been created and maintained. It is the difference between having campfire for a night and having an eternally burning tire fire (Springfield is a known necromantic power house).

That said I love making (rare) kooky non-evil undead masters. I have a printout of the Dragon article 'Shades of Death' that talks about undead use by the various alignments in among my game books to refer to.

I even created a (generally) non-evil undead kingdom in my current world that poses a bit of a dilemma. While the kingdom is at times a valuable (if little known) ally against planar incursions, and often an economic boon, it IS still a super concentrated area of negative energy and is bad for EVERYTHING living in the area even without taking the potential damage that could be caused if the current queen takes the leash off the feeding habits of some of the citizens.

[Brotherbock]

The alignment section is clear about that: no one will 100% always act according to one alignment.

(snip)
As for the good creature stopping the demon while the demon is trying to save their kid... well, it depends. Some good creatures consider that as horrible as a kid dying is, stopping a creature which will harm and kill thousands is more important. Others will disagree.

Exactly, that's the point I was trying to get across.

And frankly, that makes it all more interesting. Just 'kill the evil!' because it exists is boring. Strikes me like a particular way of interpreting 'original sin', where the demon child would just be evil because it's a demon's child, even if it had never had a bad intention in its life. It has 'sinned' just by existing. Meh, I don't buy that, and it's not as interesting for a game :)

[Paleomancer]

Good grief... this accelerated since I last posted. Plus, I thought the original post was on why animating the dead was evil, but summoning monsters was not inherently so (we could also add how wielding negative energy is apparently not inherently evil, until it randomly is). Which is a valid question - since a lot of the fluff on summoning was explicitly added to make it seem less evil (originally summons died for real, they were enslaved or conscripted) and in 5th edition an awful lot of summons rampage if they get free... to say nothing of how golems are made by forcibly binding an elemental earth spirit into a body (that at least in 3rd edition would go berserk at a certain point).

Of course, a huge part of the problem is that because the create or animate undead/summon monster moral issue does not appear in real life, there's no basis for why it should or should not be okay, making it completely and utterly arbitrary as to why either one is or is not evil. Speculating on what those moral consequences might be can be at least entertaining, but then you have to decide which basic logical premises are valid... and as this discussion has shown thus far, people can disagree intensely on such matters. For example, I recently read a piece on the late Gary Gygax's views of Lawful Good that... to avoid overreaching forum rules, let's just say I'm not at all a fan and leave it at that (Though it does explain certain alignment oddities inherent to the D&D mythos).

Frankly, we do have to accept that in a combat game, there will always be a need for an enemy that is always an acceptable target (undead, fiends, etc.), and that will supersede any logical basis for real life morality. It doesn't help that as a rule, humans vary their opinions by who is the one doing an action. One could argue that the difference between the priest who petitions long-dead saints, the shaman communing with their ancestors, the psychic who channels the will of loved ones, and the necromancer binding the souls of the dead, is dependaent on entirely on the eye of the beholder.

Unless it just gets annoyed and vaporizes them all, of course XD

[Willie the Duck]

Exactly, that's the point I was trying to get across.

And frankly, that makes it all more interesting. Just 'kill the evil!' because it exists is boring. Strikes me like a particular way of interpreting 'original sin', where the demon child would just be evil because it's a demon's child, even if it had never had a bad intention in its life. It has 'sinned' just by existing. Meh, I don't buy that, and it's not as interesting for a game :)

And I don't think anyone would meaningfully disagree (except maybe to qualify 'sometimes interesting for a game). I think most people acknowledge that the path D&D chose to take for 5e is not the way that leads to great interesting moral questions, in-game. It is instead the nice, sweet, simple way that lets you not ask, 'is it okay if I go in there and destroy all the undead?' for simplicity of the game.

No one (I think) has suggested that altering the game to fit your own preferences is anything but great. People have mostly talked about what the actual by-the-book default is, and the consequences thereof.

[Brotherbock]

And I don't think anyone would meaningfully disagree (except maybe to qualify 'sometimes interesting for a game). I think most people acknowledge that the path D&D chose to take for 5e is not the way that leads to great interesting moral questions, in-game. It is instead the nice, sweet, simple way that lets you not ask, 'is it okay if I go in there and destroy all the undead?' for simplicity of the game.

No one (I think) has suggested that altering the game to fit your own preferences is anything but great. People have mostly talked about what the actual by-the-book default is, and the consequences thereof.

No, I get that. I wasn't really opposing anything people have said about what the books actually say. Honestly, I don't care what the books actually say on issues like this :) But if people do, no problem.

[OverLordOcelot]

I agree with you on Animating Dead being Evil in core 5e. As you have poignantly shown and documented all the core books are unanimous in that.

Just coming back to this thread, but nothing in any of the core books that anyone has quoted actually states that animating dead is Evil. They are stated to be 'not a good act', but 'not a good act' is a different thing than 'an Evil act' - running a store for a profit is not a good act, but it's not Evil either. The PHB does say that only evil asters use such spells frequently, but doesn't actually define frequently, and it's in a small sidebar. People can make animating dead be a Big Always Evil thing, but the rules don't state that it has to be, nor do they state that anyone's alignment changes to evil from using Animate Dead spells. Looks like a 'gameworld defined' thing rather than an explicit rule.

[Man_Over_Game]

That's kind of the point, though. If flavor doesn't matter, then what's the point of the discussion in the first place? Officially, we're allowed to reflavor any class or ability to be however we want, so long as we don't modify any mechanics, in the strictest, most official form of gameplay this edition has to offer.

So if flavor of the default world doesn't matter, there'd be no thread. Since there is a thread and the OP wants opinions and conversation, the flavor must matter, and the only thing we have to go on is the default 5e universe (which is generally Faerun).

For any real discussion, we just have to assume that the question should be "Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not in Faerun". Either all the flavor matters, or none of it does.

[Braininthejar2]

Well, in D&D alignments are energy forms. You can literally get burned by being exposed to concentrated good.

It just happens that nercromancy mostly uses evil energies. (obviously if you create a sentient undead, it's a different matter - you force him to live with energies that you know will twist him into a violent psychopath)

[KorvinStarmast]

As a point of clarification... note that cosmologically Negative Energy is not evil nor unnatural; and ‘naturally occurring undead’ are a thing.
Example? I can't think of one off the top of my head.

just like there is naturally occurring radiation in the world... it is using it to animate corpses artificially that is Evil Yeah, weave is neutral, the usage of same possibly not.


But this is a game of genre conventions. Swords and sorcery meet schlock and B-movies, with a healthy dose of Westerns' frontier heroic everyman thrown in for good measure. Zombies and the like are always the mindless bad guys in B-horror movies that you never have to worry about killing, because you know they are bad. That's why they're being used in the movie in the first place. Same thing applies in D&D. The game wouldn't have skeletons and zombies if the game didn't need low-level 'clear and obvious acceptable targets.' Incongruities created by players deciding they wanted to use these spells to even the odds is a conflict that the game has never really resolved. But it's so edgy to subvert tropes, Tsukiko (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0830.html) imitators are far more common that I wish they were.


I know I’ve been jumped on this before... and not at all intended to support any real world examples in the slightest... but... in the Great Wheel Cosmology slavery is often as much a Lawful thing (controlling others via social order in the extreme) as an Evil one. Djinn are generally Good and are described as having slaves, and slaves are part of the Egyptian afterlife scheme that is centered in the... well... Good-adjacent Arcadia. Caste systems (especially non-human ones) that include a slave caste are also often described as Lawful Popcorn purchased.

[Unoriginal]

Example? I can't think of one off the top of my head.

The skeleton entry says that sometime skeletons animate spontaneously, for starter.

[KorvinStarmast]

The skeleton entry says that sometime skeletons animate spontaneously, for starter.

Not quite. What the text says is ....

Skeletons
Skeletons arise when animated by dark magic. They heed the summons of spellcasters who call them from their stony tombs and ancient battlefields, or rise of their own accord in places saturated with death and loss, awakened by stirrings of necromantic energy or the presence of corrupting evil. No, not "arising spontaneously."

[Skylivedk]

Just coming back to this thread, but nothing in any of the core books that anyone has quoted actually states that animating dead is Evil. They are stated to be 'not a good act', but 'not a good act' is a different thing than 'an Evil act' - running a store for a profit is not a good act, but it's not Evil either. The PHB does say that only evil asters use such spells frequently, but doesn't actually define frequently, and it's in a small sidebar. People can make animating dead be a Big Always Evil thing, but the rules don't state that it has to be, nor do they state that anyone's alignment changes to evil from using Animate Dead spells. Looks like a 'gameworld defined' thing rather than an explicit rule.

Malifice did it once, I'll go again.

MM pg. 272:
"Skeletons arise when animated by dark magic. They heed the summons of spellcasters who call them from their stony tombs and ancient battlefields, or rise of their own accord in places saturated with death and loss, awakened by stirrings of nycromantic energy or the
presence of corrupting evil.
Animated Dead. Whatever sinister force awakens a skeleton[...]"

MM pg. 316
"The magic animating a zombie imbues it with evil"

I can only lead you to the water. Have I DM'd Necromancers who made compelling arguments about lesser evil, utility, etc. Yes. Does that mean that books are not telling us that animating dead is evil, sinister, dark magic considered taboo? Absolutely not.

[Millstone85]

Not quite. What the text says is ....
No, not "arising spontaneously."Is the difference between "arising spontaneously" and "rising of their own accord" really worth noting, if there even is one?

Anyway, I imagine that any community living near a shadow crossing would be wise to cremate its corpses, because that must happen a lot.

[KorvinStarmast]

Is the difference between "arising spontaneously" and "rising of their own accord" really worth noting, if there even is one? Anyway, I imagine that any community living near a shadow crossing would be wise to cremate its corpses, because that must happen a lot. This goes back to the post I responded to about "naturally occurring" -- which skeleton's are not, being undead -- and which the text is not supportive of. That an unnatural force (other than a spell caster) can have the effect that they arise would be an unnatural (if spontaneous) motive force to the skeletons getting up and getting busy.
Back earlier in the thread, I raised the point in re Druids:
Druids are also concerned with the delicate ecological balance that sustains plant and animal life, and the need for civilized folk to live in harmony with Nature, not in opposition to it. Druids accept that which is cruel in Nature, and they hate that which is unnatural, including Aberrations (such as Beholders and mind flayers) and Undead (such as Zombies and vampires).


Anyhoo, at a given table, I am sure that a DM can construct a world where beings, once dead, naturally arise and amble around doing ... whatever.

[JackPhoenix]

Is the difference between "arising spontaneously" and "rising of their own accord" really worth noting, if there even is one?

Anyway, I imagine that any community living near a shadow crossing would be wise to cremate its corpses, because that must happen a lot.

Do you like angry fire wraiths? Because that's how you get angry fire wraiths. Non-braindead commoner with a sling can deal with a zombie. Angry fire wraiths? Not so much.

While it's not explicitly mentioned in 5e (propably thanks lack of book bloat than because the designers decided its no longer true), those "wild" undead often spawn when the area gets tainted by the long-term presence or even just mass creation of "normal" necromantically-raised undead (Libris Mortis and Book of Vile Deeds, I'm not bothering looking for page references, though). So while your "good" necromancer may keep his zombies under control (until he oversleeps and misses the regular maintenance, that is), you better keep the pitchforks and torches ready for when your grandma dies of old age when he's around.

[Naanomi]

Various kinds of ghosts and other incorporeal undead seem to be ‘naturally occuring’; at least with a broad-planar view of what is natural. Revenants perhaps as well. At the very least they are natural within the Shadow Plane, The Negative Energy Plane itself, and arguably the Ethereal and several of the lower planes

Negative energy isn’t evil, it is a natural part of the universe... without it, Death and destruction wouldn’t be possible at all... it is just important to keep it in its natural role instead of forced corpse animation (same with other planar energies, including Positive Energy... Negative Energy is just easier to manipulate in harmful ways than some others)

[Willie the Duck]

I can only lead you to the water. Have I DM'd Necromancers who made compelling arguments about lesser evil, utility, etc. Yes. Does that mean that books are not telling us that animating dead is evil, sinister, dark magic considered taboo? Absolutely not.

This is the danger that D&D (which does so quite reasonably to allow people to make of the game what they want) provides for itself by wanting to have it both ways: you're both right. OLO is right that the book doesn't say that casting the spell is an evil act. You're right that it does everything but (the horse is lead to the water, the drinking is optional)--It tapdances all around it, across the dance floor, up the stairs, then slides down the banister majestically to the awe of the audience, but never steps squarely onto that tile. Lots of references to sinister, evil energy, malevolent spirits, and the finest point that only an evil person would regularly do so (leaving one to wonder if the act itself is evil, or merely only something an evil person would consider a reasonable course of action), and so on. But tapdancing around is (deliberately) leaving the final point open to interpretation. The designers left that last leap ambiguous. We can call it cheap or unbrave (I personally think it is crazy like a fox, in that their goal is the service of an diverse audience with mutually incompatible preferences), but they are in some small measure trying to have it both ways.



While it's not explicitly mentioned in 5e (propably thanks lack of book bloat than because the designers decided its no longer true), those "wild" undead often spawn when the area gets tainted by the long-term presence or even just mass creation of "normal" necromantically-raised undead (Libris Mortis and Book of Vile Deeds, I'm not bothering looking for page references, though).

Even within the context of 3e, LM and BoVD (and BoED) are strong divergences from the standard lore, theology, epistemology, etc. of the game, deliberately tuned to those who want a more horrific style of gaming. There of course is not 'Official'-ness or 'RAW' when it comes to cross-edition discussions, but even within 3e, a lot of people seem to consider the implications of what comes from those three books to be only 'canon'/'relevant'/etc. when discussing campaigns in which the DM has decided to use those books.

[Unoriginal]

This is the danger that D&D (which does so quite reasonably to allow people to make of the game what they want) provides for itself by wanting to have it both ways: you're both right. OLO is right that the book doesn't say that casting the spell is an evil act. You're right that it does everything but (the horse is lead to the water, the drinking is optional)--It tapdances all around it, across the dance floor, up the stairs, then slides down the banister majestically to the awe of the audience, but never steps squarely onto that tile. Lots of references to sinister, evil energy, malevolent spirits, and the finest point that only an evil person would regularly do so (leaving one to wonder if the act itself is evil, or merely only something an evil person would consider a reasonable course of action), and so on. But tapdancing around is (deliberately) leaving the final point open to interpretation. The designers left that last leap ambiguous. We can call it cheap or unbrave (I personally think it is crazy like a fox, in that their goal is the service of an diverse audience with mutually incompatible preferences), but they are in some small measure trying to have it both ways.

... that's quite a different perspective from mine.

To me, 5e is utterly clear and rather inoffensive on the question: necromancy is NOT evil, animating the dead is NOT good (as you can make an argument as to why doing it once for a given cause isn't malevolent, but the method you use is still an unethical and potentially very dangerous move by enslaving evil spirits to do your binding), and only people of an evil alignment would do it frequently (because you are frequently doing something unethical and potentially very dangerous). It's not trying to have it both ways, it has it *one* way and that's it.


Some people can't seem to accept what is written in the book and it's them who do the whole dancing around in the stairs-tripple-back-aerial-salto thing you're talking about to try to justify their opinions as being canon/superior or to prove the default canon as being stupid/illogical/irrelevant/biased/other dismissive terms, even though they can do whatever they want in their own settings.


Same things go with alignment in general. The books are clear that alignment is a) not a bigger deal to worry about than your Trait/Flaw/Bond/etc b) a description of your typical behavior overall. Yet you still have a-dozen-pages-long threads with people arguing to their last breath if smashing an unconscious hobgoblin's head after they've killed twenty farmers is a evil act that'd make Paladins fall as if we were still stuck in 3.X.

[Willie the Duck]

... that's quite a different perspective from mine.

To me, 5e is utterly clear and rather inoffensive on the question: necromancy is NOT evil, animating the dead is NOT good (as you can make an argument as to why doing it once for a given cause isn't malevolent, but the method you use is still an unethical and potentially very dangerous move by enslaving evil spirits to do your binding), and only people of an evil alignment would do it frequently (because you are frequently doing something unethical and potentially very dangerous). It's not trying to have it both ways, it has it *one* way and that's it.

And yet I don't think we're meaningfully disagreeing. The book does not (even though it easily could have) say that casting the spell is an evil act. Instead it drops breadcrumbs into the text of the spell, the description of skeletons, etc. with words/terms like 'sinister', 'evil energy', and 'malevolent spirits.' Is that not-clearly-stating it as evil (while still wanting to associate it with the evil tropes with which it has traditionally been associated), or clearly stating it as not evil? As you say, perspective.

[Unoriginal]

And yet I don't think we're meaningfully disagreeing. The book does not (even though it easily could have) say that casting the spell is an evil act. Instead it drops breadcrumbs into the text of the spell, the description of skeletons, etc. with words/terms like 'sinister', 'evil energy', and 'malevolent spirits.' Is that not-clearly-stating it as evil (while still wanting to associate it with the evil tropes with which it has traditionally been associated), or clearly stating it as not evil?

Your question is based on a false dichotomy. The books clearly states that it is not good, and clearly states that only evil people regularly use it. All that " 'sinister', 'evil energy', and 'malevolent spirits.' " is not "breadcrumbs into the text", they're explanations/justification/reinforcers of the idea.

Using those "malevolent spirits"? It's not good (as Sonic says). Is is evil? Well, only evil people do it regularly, so the implication is clear that while it's not good, good or neutral people can use it exceptionally.

There's a realm between "good act" and "doing it once shows you're evil".

[Willie the Duck]

Your question is based on a false dichotomy.

Listing two perspectives just mentioned and saying, 'is it A or B? That's a matter of perspective' is not a false dichotomy, it is a reference to the two possible (of infinitely many) perspectives just mentioned (and thus most relevant to the conversation at hand), and discussing the finer points of each. You are too used to people who are trying to 'win the conversation.' We are generally agreeing upon what is actually in the books, yet you are still reacting on the defensive.


The books clearly states that it is not good, and clearly states that only evil people regularly use it.

Using those "malevolent spirits"? It's not good (as Sonic says). Is is evil? Well, only evil people do it regularly, so the implication is clear that while it's not good, good or neutral people can use it exceptionally.
Yes, Using the Animate Dead spell is not listed as evil, but instead an act that only an evil person would regularly do. We agree, as have most people on this thread who are taking this seriously.


All that " 'sinister', 'evil energy', and 'malevolent spirits.' " is not "breadcrumbs into the text", they're explanations/justification/reinforcers of the idea.

How is breadcrumb meaningfully different from the terms you chose?


There's a realm between "good act" and "doing it once shows you're evil".

Of course. Everyone would agree on that. Again, juxtaposing the two positions being discussed and saying that the differentiating between the two being a matter of perspective is not assuming that only two positions are possible.

Regarding "doing it once shows you're evil" more generally, D&D (across editions) does not adhere to a 'mortal sin'-style mechanic (sufficiently so that 3e and earlier paladins could have a roughly such a mechanic as their personal burden, distinct from the general alignment mechanic). Even acts tagged with as discretely evil aren't specified as one-and-done for alignment change. I think only 1E AD&D had any real 'tracking' mechanism.

[Unoriginal]

Listing two perspectives just mentioned and saying, 'is it A or B? That's a matter of perspective' is not a false dichotomy, it is a reference to the two possible (of infinitely many) perspectives just mentioned (and thus most relevant to the conversation at hand), and discussing the finer points of each. You are too used to people who are trying to 'win the conversation.' We are generally agreeing upon what is actually in the books, yet you are still reacting on the defensive.

My point was that your question said "is it A or B?" (aka, as you put it "Is that not-clearly-stating it as evil or clearly stating it as not evil?") when the book says "it's C".



You are too used to people who are trying to 'win the conversation.'

Well, I'll thank you for not saying I'm trying to "win the conversation".



How is breadcrumb meaningfully different from the terms you chose?

"Breadcrumb" would imply they only put clues in the text and then expected us to piece it together to understand what the situation is, rather than make a statement that explains the situation and then add the justificative elements in the text.




Regarding "doing it once shows you're evil" more generally, D&D (across editions) does not adhere to a 'mortal sin'-style mechanic (sufficiently so that 3e and earlier paladins could have a roughly such a mechanic as their personal burden, distinct from the general alignment mechanic). Even acts tagged with as discretely evil aren't specified as one-and-done for alignment change. I think only 1E AD&D had any real 'tracking' mechanism.

And yet we've all seen or heard of DMs basically salivating at the idea of making your Paladin go pitch-black evil whenever faced with contrived Trolley problems.

What is in the books and what people play with is often quite different, especially on those matters.

[Throne12]

I was just reading over animate dead spell and a few things stand out to me.

1: it say your spell imbues the target with a foul mimicry of life. It say nothing about ripping out a soul and stuffing it into the body. You are just filling it with Necrotic energy no soul needed.

2: it say if the skeleton/zombie is not issued a order it just defends it self from hostile creatures. So there is no seeking out living creatures.

3. It doesn't say anything about them turning on any living creature if the caster dont reassert control over unlike a few summon creatures spells do aka conjure elemental.

So just reading animate dead it reads more like a undead puppet then creating undead creatures like in the monster manual.

[Unoriginal]

I was just reading over animate dead spell and a few things stand out to me.

1: it say your spell imbues the target with a foul mimicry of life. It say nothing about ripping out a soul and stuffing it into the body. You are just filling it with Necrotic energy no soul needed.

2: it say if the skeleton/zombie is not issued a order it just defends it self from hostile creatures. So there is no seeking out living creatures.

3. It doesn't say anything about them turning on any living creature if the caster dont reassert control over unlike a few summon creatures spells do aka conjure elemental.

So just reading animate dead it reads more like a undead puppet then creating undead creatures like in the monster manual.

... the Monster Manual describes their behaviors when not controlled. Explicitly so.

[The Jack]

Agree with 1 and 2, have concerns with three.

Defending itself likely includes killing any living creature it sees. It wont wonder out your house looking for new things to kill, but it could work under the assumption that anything that sees it plans to kill it (being undead and all)

[Max_Killjoy]

... the Monster Manual describes their behaviors when not controlled. Explicitly so.


Curious, because I don't know and AFB -- does the spell explicitly say that the animated undead are exactly as described in the MM entry, or is that a cross-book assumption that some are making?




Agree with 1 and 2, have concerns with three.

Defending itself likely includes killing any living creature it sees. It wont wonder out your house looking for new things to kill, but it could work under the assumption that anything that sees it plans to kill it (being undead and all)


Are the undead from AD actually making any assumptions? I got the idea that they were unthinking muppets more than conscious entities.

[KorvinStarmast]

I honestly have no idea why I engage in these ridiculous arguments.
I'm out. This discussion is yet another version of an alignment thread, most of which become toxic. It is at least cordial, mostly.
Various kinds of ghosts and other incorporeal undead seem to be ‘naturally occuring’; at least with a broad-planar view of what is natural. Revenants perhaps as well. At the very least they are natural within the Shadow Plane, The Negative Energy Plane itself, and arguably the Ethereal and several of the lower planes

Negative energy isn’t evil, it is a natural part of the universe... without it, Death and destruction wouldn’t be possible at all... it is just important to keep it in its natural role instead of forced corpse animation (same with other planar energies, including Positive Energy... Negative Energy is just easier to manipulate in harmful ways than some others) Good points made, so that "use (and intention) of spell/energy" gets called evil rather than the spell/basis itself. A problem with the above reasoning is that the basic point of reference for all PCs (and canon, and published adventures) is the prime material plane, not the negative material plane. Still points worth considering.

I was just reading over animate dead spell and a few things stand out to me.
1: it say your spell imbues the target with a foul mimicry of life. It say nothing about ripping out a soul and stuffing it into the body. You are just filling it with Necrotic energy no soul needed.

2: it say if the skeleton/zombie is not issued a order it just defends it self from hostile creatures. So there is no seeking out living creatures.

3. It doesn't say anything about them turning on any living creature if the caster dont reassert control over unlike a few summon creatures spells do aka conjure elemental.

So just reading animate dead it reads more like a undead puppet then creating undead creatures like in the monster manual. Self defense in point two is a survival trait, common to anything that doesn't want to be destroyed. I don't see how that figures into alignment. When I look up zombies, I find this:


A zombie left without orders simply stands in place and rots unless something comes along that it can kill. The magic animating a zombie imbues it with evil, so left without purpose, it attacks any living creature it encounters. We reading the same monster manual?

[Throne12]

This discussion is yet another version of an alignment thread, most of which become toxic. It is at least cordial, mostly. Good points made, so that "use (and intention) of spell/energy" gets called evil rather than the spell/basis itself. A problem with the above reasoning is that the basic point of reference for all PCs (and canon, and published adventures) is the prime material plane, not the negative material plane. Still points worth considering.
Self defense in point two is a survival trait, common to anything that doesn't want to be destroyed. I don't see how that figures into alignment. When I look up zombies, I find this:

We reading the same monster manual?

No we are not cause I'm read the spells description. The monster manual is a DM's tool and things work differently then what's giving to players.

[Unoriginal]

No we are not cause I'm read the spells description. The monster manual is a DM's tool and things work differently then what's giving to players.

If you use a spell to create a skeleton, it's a skeleton from the MM. That you are controlling them via magic doesn't change that.

[Max_Killjoy]

If you use a spell to create a skeleton, it's a skeleton from the MM. That you are controlling them via magic doesn't change that.

As asked above, genuinely curious... does the spell or a general rule from spellcasting state this, or is it an assumption that skeleton = skeleton?

[Marcelinari]

As asked above, genuinely curious... does the spell or a general rule from spellcasting state this, or is it an assumption that skeleton = skeleton?

This is from roll20, which is a good (but not always perfect) transcription of the PHB.

“The target becomes a Skeleton if you chose bones or a Zombie if you chose a corpse (the DM has the creature's game statistics).”

[Hail Tempus]

As asked above, genuinely curious... does the spell or a general rule from spellcasting state this, or is it an assumption that skeleton = skeleton? When a spell creates something unique, such as flying daggers created by Animate Objects, or Bigby's Hand, the stats are given in the spell description. Spells like Animate Dead and Conjure Elemental describe how the summoned/created creature acts while under a player's control. Once a player loses control of their creation, the creation defaults to DM control, and DM's typically rely on the MM or other relevant sourcebook to determine how a given creature acts.

This isn't explicitly spelled out anywhere I'm aware of. But, it seems perfectly logical to me that a creature that has the zombie or skeleton stats from the MM would also act as described in its MM entry, unless someone was overriding that through magical means.

[Max_Killjoy]

This is from roll20, which is a good (but not always perfect) transcription of the PHB.

“The target becomes a Skeleton if you chose bones or a Zombie if you chose a corpse (the DM has the creature's game statistics).”


Thank you.




When a spell creates something unique, such as flying daggers created by Animate Objects, or Bigby's Hand, the stats are given in the spell description. Spells like Animate Dead and Conjure Elemental describe how the summoned/created creature acts while under a player's control. Once a player loses control of their creation, the creation defaults to DM control, and DM's typically rely on the MM or other relevant sourcebook to determine how a given creature acts.

This isn't explicitly spelled out anywhere I'm aware of. But, it seems perfectly logical to me that a creature that has the zombie or skeleton stats from the MM would also act as described in its MM entry, unless someone was overriding that through magical means.


(Thanks.)

And that's not a wrong way to go, I just wanted to make sure the thought process was being explicitly laid out so that everyone understood each other's underlying premises and logic, and could openly see where the disconnects might be.

[Throne12]

When a spell creates something unique, such as flying daggers created by Animate Objects, or Bigby's Hand, the stats are given in the spell description. Spells like Animate Dead and Conjure Elemental describe how the summoned/created creature acts while under a player's control. Once a player loses control of their creation, the creation defaults to DM control, and DM's typically rely on the MM or other relevant sourcebook to determine how a given creature acts.

This isn't explicitly spelled out anywhere I'm aware of. But, it seems perfectly logical to me that a creature that has the zombie or skeleton stats from the MM would also act as described in its MM entry, unless someone was overriding that through magical means.

Except when it is stated like in conjure elemental or any of the summon devil spells where it say if you lose control over them they are Hostile twords the caster and party.

[Unoriginal]

Except when it is stated like in conjure elemental or any of the summon devil spells where it say if you lose control over them they are Hostile twords the caster and party.

Your point? It just tells in which mood they'll be if the spell breaks. Doesn't mean they'll behave differently from what their MM entries tell otherwise

[Throne12]

Your point? It just tells in which mood they'll be if the spell breaks. Doesn't mean they'll behave differently from what their MM entries tell otherwise

I'm going by the spell reads because you cant use the mm text. Not all tables use the lore in the mm.

[Hail Tempus]

I'm going by the spell reads because you cant use the mm text. Not all tables use the lore in the mm. Why can't the DM use the MM text to determine how a skeleton will act when not under the control of a player? That seems like a reasonable defaultm unless the DM has come up with his own fluff for them.

[Throne12]

Why can't the DM use the MM text to determine how a skeleton will act when not under the control of a player? That seems like a reasonable defaultm unless the DM has come up with his own fluff for them.

Yes he/she can but you have to look at it through the players pov. The spell does not say they are hostile unless the DM say they are. Unlike the other spells where it does say they are hostile.

[Hail Tempus]

Yes he/she can but you have to look at it through the players pov. The spell does not say they are hostile unless the DM say they are. Unlike the other spells where it does say they are hostile. According to the spell, "The creature is under your control for 24 hours, after which it stops obeying any command you’ve given it." What would a player reasonably expect an undead creature to do once it's out of his PC's control? They're abominations made out of evil energy that hate the living. Barring something in the spell description to the contrary, the reasonable thing to expect is that once you lose control of it, it will revert to acting in its default (MM) nature.

If you cast Dominate Monster on a Fire Giant, how would you expect it to act once the spell wears off?

[Marcelinari]

The DM can always alter the fiction in any way they please. The text of the spell indicates that the DM is in full control of the statistics of the undead, and in fact that the PC can only direct the undead to carry out its orders, which the DM should therefore do their best to enact. At all points the undead are under the direct control of the DM.

Since we have no indication of how any given DM will alter the fiction, it is a reasonable assumption that they will use the basic fluff and statistics provided as a set to them through the Monster Manual. To disregard the Monster Manual fluff because it’s not a player resource is also to disregard the undead stats, because those are not a player resource. All the spell actually does, per the text, is allow you to raise and command the undead as a Skeleton or Zombie - without the use of the Monster Manual and the DM to interpret it, those Skeletons and Zombies cannot actually do anything.

Animate Dead is not a spell that can be completely understood using only player-facing resources.

[JackPhoenix]

The DM can always alter the fiction in any way they please. The text of the spell indicates that the DM is in full control of the statistics of the undead, and in fact that the PC can only direct the undead to carry out its orders, which the DM should therefore do their best to enact. At all points the undead are under the direct control of the DM.

Since we have no indication of how any given DM will alter the fiction, it is a reasonable assumption that they will use the basic fluff and statistics provided as a set to them through the Monster Manual. To disregard the Monster Manual fluff because it’s not a player resource is also to disregard the undead stats, because those are not a player resource. All the spell actually does, per the text, is allow you to raise and command the undead as a Skeleton or Zombie - without the use of the Monster Manual and the DM to interpret it, those Skeletons and Zombies cannot actually do anything.

Animate Dead is not a spell that can be completely understood using only player-facing resources.

Stat blocks for skeletons and zombies (and familiar options, ranger companions and common mounts) are in appendix D in the PHB.

That appendix still refers the DM to the MM for more information, and completely lacks fluff.

[Marcelinari]

Stat blocks for skeletons and zombies (and familiar options, ranger companions and common mounts) are in appendix D in the PHB.

That appendix still refers the DM to the MM for more information, and completely lacks fluff.

Hmm, I did think that there were skeleton and zombie stats in the PHB, but I only had online resources.

The spell text still directs the player to look to the DM for stats, rather than the PHB. While the player is capable of knowing the stats for a standard Skeleton, the DM still retains direct control of the undead, and the DM is not limited to player-facing resources to determine the disposition of the undead.

[Malifice]

Just coming back to this thread, but nothing in any of the core books that anyone has quoted actually states that animating dead is Evil. They are stated to be 'not a good act', but 'not a good act' is a different thing than 'an Evil act' - running a store for a profit is not a good act, but it's not Evil either. The PHB does say that only evil asters use such spells frequently, but doesn't actually define frequently, and it's in a small sidebar. People can make animating dead be a Big Always Evil thing, but the rules don't state that it has to be, nor do they state that anyone's alignment changes to evil from using Animate Dead spells. Looks like a 'gameworld defined' thing rather than an explicit rule.

It's not a good act to animate dead with magic, and only evil casters do so often.

Zombies and Skeletons (and the undead type) are aminated by 'unholy evil black magic' drawn directly from the negative energy plane (described as the literal source of cosmic evil). The undead themselves are evil murderous monsters.

Whats the clear and unambiguous inference there brother? If that wording isnt clear enough for you then I dont know what is.

As a Lawyer IRL, I wouldnt want to be the Lawyer for the supposed 'Good' aligned necromancer in court trying to make the argument that Necromancy 'can be good' I assure you.

[Malifice]

Is the difference between "arising spontaneously" and "rising of their own accord" really worth noting, if there even is one?

Anyway, I imagine that any community living near a shadow crossing would be wise to cremate its corpses, because that must happen a lot.

They animate spontaneously in the presence of great evil.

Clearly implying a connection between evil and undead.

I know corellation isnt causation, but come on. Can it get any more explicit?

[Naanomi]

drawn directly from the negative energy plane (described as the literal source of cosmic evil). The undead themselves are evil murderous monsters.
The negative energy plane is *not* evil... it is destruction, but amoral... and not tied to the Outer Planes that care about such things as Evil. It happens to be easily used for evil ends, but that is independent of its nature... it definetly isn’t the ‘source’ of evil in any meaningful way

“The Positive and Negative Planes. These two planes enfold the rest of the cosmology, providing the raw forces of life and death that underlie the rest of existence in the multiverse.”

And not all Undead are evil... Revenants tend to neutrality; and a few can be any alignment (ghosts, phantom warriors)

[Malifice]

The negative energy plane is *not* evil... it is destruction, but amoral... and not tied to the Outer Planes that care about such things as Evil.

There has always been a connection between 'evil' and the negative energy plane/ negative energy though. From a cosmic level, the 'evil' gods have traditionally granted/ formed a conduit between the negative energy plane and their worshippers (channel negative energy), and virtually all creatures that draw power from that plane (undead) are traditionally 'evil' while 'good' deities tend to draw power from the opposite plane.

This is in line with the general propostion that the creation and sustenence of life (mercy, compassion, protection) being traditionally good acts, and the destruction and disruption of life (murder, torture etc) being seein as traditionally evil acts.

[Millstone85]

They animate spontaneously in the presence of great evil.

Clearly implying a connection between evil and undead.

I know corellation isnt causation, but come on. Can it get any more explicit?I am not sure how you found my post to be at odd with that.

[Willie the Duck]

It's not a good act to animate dead with magic, and only evil casters do so often.

Zombies and Skeletons (and the undead type) are aminated by 'unholy evil black magic' drawn directly from the negative energy plane (described as the literal source of cosmic evil). The undead themselves are evil murderous monsters.

Whats the clear and unambiguous inference there brother? If that wording isnt clear enough for you then I dont know what is.

In my mind, it is toeing the line (trying to have it both ways, as I put it earlier).


I wouldnt want to be the Lawyer for the supposed 'Good' aligned necromancer in court trying to make the argument that Necromancy 'can be good' I assure you.

But he didn't say it 'can be good.' He stated it was 'not a good act, but it's not Evil either.' There does seem to be at least three potential positions possible-- 'Good' (or at least perfectly fine. 'this is a tool, ask me how it is being used and I will rule on good-evil), 'Evil' ('this is apostasy, for some in-universe reason'), and 'Not-specified-as-evil' ('the book says only an evil person would regularly do this, but that is not the same as it being evil'). I don't know if I agree that it is in the not-specified-as-evil category (or, as I said, I think it toes the line), but from a sets-capturing-the-universe-of-possibilities perspective, the distinction seems valid.


I know corellation isnt causation, but come on. Can it get any more explicit?

I think it absolutely has all the corellation , implications, inferences, associations, trappings, correlates, and so on. What's absent (and a little bit glaringly so, only an evil person would regularly do this is not an accidental phrasing, to my mind) is the statement that using the spell is an evil act (which they absolutely could have included).


There has always been a connection between 'evil' and the negative energy plane/ negative energy though. From a cosmic level, the 'evil' gods have traditionally granted/ formed a conduit between the negative energy plane and their worshippers (channel negative energy), and virtually all creatures that draw power from that plane (undead) are traditionally 'evil' while 'good' deities tend to draw power from the opposite plane.

This is in line with the general propostion that the creation and sustenence of life (mercy, compassion, protection) being traditionally good acts, and the destruction and disruption of life (murder, torture etc) being seein as traditionally evil acts.

That sure sounds familiar, which (since I've mostly skimmed over the planar descriptions in 5e) means it was likely true in previous editions. Is it still true in 5e? You've been very (laudably) good at finding text references so far in this conversation. Is this also in the books?
Thanks.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That sure sounds familiar, which (since I've mostly skimmed over the planar descriptions in 5e) means it was likely true in previous editions. Is it still true in 5e? You've been very (laudably) good at finding text references so far in this conversation. Is this also in the books?
Thanks.

A few related things:

* Note that almost any non-evil deity can have Life domain clerics. This strongly implies that Evil deities usually (always?) do not have that domain.

PHB 60:

Almost any non-evil deity can claim influence over this domain.

* Note that the Death domain (DMG) is strongly restricted by the text to evil clerics and clerics of evil gods. It also focuses heavily around Necromancy/necrotic damage. Specifically, it says that "the class options below let you create two specific villainous archetypes: the evil high priest and evil knight or antipaladin" Animate dead is a domain spell here.

* Paladin's Divine Sense ability reads:

The presence of strong evil registers...and powerful good rings...you know the location of any celestial, fiend, or undead...
This strongly implies that undead are on the same scale of "strong evil" as fiends and polar opposites to celestials. Same goes for the extra damage on Divine Smite--it affects fiends and undead (placing them on the same side of things). Vengeance Paladins have the Abjure Enemy CD effect--fiends and undead have disadvantage.

* The Oathbreaker paladin is also described as turned to Evil, and his features revolve around strengthening undead. Specifically: CD Control Undead, Aura of Hate, with animate dead on the Oath spells list.

[Naanomi]

There has always been a connection between 'evil' and the negative energy plane/ negative energy though. From a cosmic level, the 'evil' gods have traditionally granted/ formed a conduit between the negative energy plane and their worshippers (channel negative energy), and virtually all creatures that draw power from that plane (undead) are traditionally 'evil' while 'good' deities tend to draw power from the opposite plane.

This is in line with the general propostion that the creation and sustenence of life (mercy, compassion, protection) being traditionally good acts, and the destruction and disruption of life (murder, torture etc) being seein as traditionally evil acts.
Negative Energy is often used for evil, and is more dangerous to life on the Prime than productive energy in most situations (though too much of the later is also deadly)... but calling it evil in any cosmological sense in any edition (except 4e? Not my Lore strength) is a gross misunderstanding of its place in the Great Wheel Cosmology; and indeed perhaps the role of Cosmological Alignment in the setting all together.

Also, murder and torture are not part of negative energy, anymore than they are part of steel just because people tend to use knives... it is a neutral, amoral substance that people commonly use for harm. That’s like... claiming Fire is the Evil element next to air, water, and earth because it is more immediately dangerous and fiends like to burn people with it

[Willie the Duck]

A few related things:
* Note that almost any non-evil deity can have Life domain clerics. This strongly implies that Evil deities usually (always?) do not have that domain.
PHB 60:
* Note that the Death domain (DMG) is strongly restricted by the text to evil clerics and clerics of evil gods. It also focuses heavily around Necromancy/necrotic damage. Specifically, it says that "the class options below let you create two specific villainous archetypes: the evil high priest and evil knight or antipaladin" Animate dead is a domain spell here.
* Paladin's Divine Sense ability reads:
This strongly implies that undead are on the same scale of "strong evil" as fiends and polar opposites to celestials. Same goes for the extra damage on Divine Smite--it affects fiends and undead (placing them on the same side of things). Vengeance Paladins have the Abjure Enemy CD effect--fiends and undead have disadvantage.
* The Oathbreaker paladin is also described as turned to Evil, and his features revolve around strengthening undead. Specifically: CD Control Undead, Aura of Hate, with animate dead on the Oath spells list.

I'm a little confused. None of these are related to the negative energy plane.

Edit: Looking back on my quote, I included Malifices next paragraph ("This is in line with the general propostion that the creation and sustenence of life (mercy, compassion, protection) being traditionally good acts, and the destruction and disruption of life (murder, torture etc) being seein as traditionally evil acts.") Is that what this is to support?
I guess I wasn't asking about that (well, obviously I was, since l included it. But that wasn't the section pertaining to which I was looking for verification). I was wondering about the association of negative energy plane with evilness in 5e.

As I said, I absolutely thing there is massive correlation, implication, inference, association, trappings, and such between undead and evil (and goodness with healing/Life domain), etc. Because, again, I believe the designers want to generally maintain the basic status quo of Necromancers (the villain of many of the genre fiction that inspired this game in the first place), and their undead minions, to be default acceptable targets for the good-aligned (so, more than murderhobos) heroes to valiantly quest towards the defeat of, with little question that they are doing the right thing. However, they have (almost conspicuously) failed to completely wall off the use of the spell behind an evil-act gate, also because (again, IMO) they want to allow the players and DMs who want to allow players to use the spell without playing 'villainous characters' (yes, even though a house rule would work just as well).

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm a little confused. None of these are related to the negative energy plane.

But they relate to the "undead are inherently connected evil" part, since undead are fueled by a connection to the negative energy plane/negative energy.

Negative energy is consistently connected with forces of death, undeath, and evil. Good gods don't use it--they can have the Life domain (connected to positive energy). Evil gods do not--they can have the Death domain (connected to negative energy).

[Unoriginal]

Doesn't help that some of most of the impressive feats of negative energy usage are connected to Orcus in one way or another.

Then again, to be honest, Orcus has a big finger deep in the necromancy pie in general.

Gotta hand it to him, he certainly is proactive for someone after which the trope "Orcus On His Throne" was named.

[Naanomi]

But they relate to the "undead are inherently connected evil" part, since undead are fueled by a connection to the negative energy plane/negative energy.

Negative energy is consistently connected with forces of death, undeath, and evil. Good gods don't use it--they can have the Life domain (connected to positive energy). Evil gods do not--they can have the Death domain (connected to negative energy).
In 5e there are neutral Death domain gods, and a few evil Life
Domain ones... and Good gods definetly access negative energy at times, just not the same way Evil Gods do. In fact, historically the only God that actually lived in the Negative Energy Plane is the neutral but generally revered member of the Vedic Pantheon: Shiva

[Throne12]

There has always been a connection between 'evil' and the negative energy plane/ negative energy though. From a cosmic level, the 'evil' gods have traditionally granted/ formed a conduit between the negative energy plane and their worshippers (channel negative energy), and virtually all creatures that draw power from that plane (undead) are traditionally 'evil' while 'good' deities tend to draw power from the opposite plane.

This is in line with the general propostion that the creation and sustenence of life (mercy, compassion, protection) being traditionally good acts, and the destruction and disruption of life (murder, torture etc) being seein as traditionally evil acts.

Then why are you not evil if u cast fireball or lightning bolt.

[Willie the Duck]

But they relate to the "undead are inherently connected evil" part, since undead are fueled by a connection to the negative energy plane/negative energy.

Negative energy is consistently connected with forces of death, undeath, and evil. Good gods don't use it--they can have the Life domain (connected to positive energy). Evil gods do not--they can have the Death domain (connected to negative energy).

Yeah. Okay. Based on the block of text I included, it is relevant to my question. I (internally) was asking about the plane.

I don't think anyone really doubts that undead in-game are connected/tied/or share thematic space with evilness in this edition (particularly in comparison to the previous two, where they went a long way towards making it closer to 'many iconic undead are usually or always evil, but the actual state of undeath isn't specifically so'). I'm glad to see them move back towards the genre fiction--although, to be fair, late-90s through 2013 or so had a bunch of good guy vampires and the like (Buffy, Twilight), while before (Hammer horror, Night of the Living Dead) and after (The Walking Dead) the undead were more clear and obvious villains -- so maybe they were consistently mimicking the genre fiction of the times.

[Unoriginal]

Then why are you not evil if u cast fireball or lightning bolt.

If you regularly kills innocent people with Fireball or Lightning Bolt, your behavior will be described by one of the evil alignments.

[Naanomi]

From the 2e Inner Planes book: (emphasis mine)

You've heard of the dead book. This is it. Life-sucking, soul destroying, wish-you-were-anywhere-else plane of Death. Everything that is contrary, antithetical to life, antiexistence, or just plain destructive ultimately comes from here. You can save the philosophical discussions for the Outer Planes. This isn't a matter of good or evil. It doesn't reflect the realms of order or chaos. It's a matter of life vs. death.
Existence vs. annihilation. Being vs. nonbeing. If a body accepts that things exist (and yes, I know that there're some whose philosophy claims that nothing does, but let that lie for the nonce), she's sure to understand that whatever creative force brought them into being has an opposite number. That's the Negative Energy Plane.

[Calimehter]

I'm a bit late to the game, but my own way of helping myself wrap my head around this issue has been to compare Animate Dead to Animate Object.

Animate Object is "harder" to cast (5th level vs. 3rd level) for the same pile of bones. It was this way in 3.x D&D as well. Why is that? Because Animate Object is truly creating a neutral construct with the will of the caster and nothing but the will of the caster. Animate Dead is quicker, easier, and (dare I say) more seductive . . . because it is using "help" to get the bones up and moving. It is *not* creating a neutral construct. It is creating an actual undead creature, a Skeleton or Zombie entry from the MM, via manipulation of "life force" or "souls" (Necromancy) to get the bones moving around. Such an undead being is inherently evil.

A DM is free to change things up in their own campaign worlds and make any house-ruling they like to support that . . . but in the absence of such a clearly spelled out house ruling, the player who casts Animate Dead should expect it to work like the spell *and* the Monster Manual suggest it does [just because a rule is not in the PHB and is instead located in the DMG or the MM does not mean that a player is not subject to it]. A player should not assume otherwise (or feel that the DM is being "unjust" by not granting such a request) just because they want Animate Dead spell to have the same characteristics as the higher level Animate Object spell.

[Hail Tempus]

Then why are you not evil if u cast fireball or lightning bolt. Fireballs and lightning bolts are nothing more than collections of elemental force. They dissipate as soon as they're used, and they are completely under the control of the caster at all times. They can certainly be used for evil acts, but they're not animated collections of life-hating evil.

[Throne12]

I'm just going to say this.

Necrotic energy is only evil because people have a bias out look of good and evil.

[Willie the Duck]

Necrotic energy is only evil because people have a bis out look of good and evil.

I think something got lost in the translation (or typing) here. Can you clarify this before we comment upon it?

[Max_Killjoy]

To me, this thread is both a demonstration of why a system loaded with intentional ambiguity and "trying to have it both ways" is begging for trouble, and a demonstration that D&D is a system for a particular sort of setting that tries to pretend it's not for marketing reasons.

On the former, the writers appear to be doing everything they can to hint that creating / animating undead is a thing evil characters do, but also fastidiously avoiding coming out and saying it. Maybe the players of the game are supposed to see it in that light and understand that it's going to be a subjective thing depending on the table, but I doubt it ever works out that way, especially given...

...the latter, in which a particular sort of setting, with Positive and Negative energy kinda tied to Cosmic Forces of Good and Evil, and a giant pancake stack of various extra-dimensional planes, and so on, is an underlying assumption.

The writers seem to try very hard to have the setting assumption of objective and cosmic Good and Evil baked into the assumed and unspoken setting, without entirely following through with the implications on the "material" plane and for "mortal" beings, and leaving things "subjective" for each table to decide...

[Throne12]

I think something got lost in the translation (or typing) here. Can you clarify this before we comment upon it?

Would you say using any other necromancy spell is a evil act.


I can Concede how Reanimating a dead body can be seen as evil. Even though I disagree.

But how can a Cosmic energy have a Alignment.

[Naanomi]

But how can a Cosmic energy have a Alignment.
Well... in the Great Wheel Cosmology Evil itself is sort of a cosmic energy... but Negative Energy isn’t cosmologically evil

[Sigreid]

My personal opinion, and the way I look at it in the game I run is that animating dead is not inherently evil. What it is is intentionally bringing dangerous creatures of I'll intent into the world. The reason only evil beings will do it regularly is because over time if you keep doing something it's likely to have something go wrong (the wind up somewhere where you can't control them, an unforeseen situation comes up and they impulse kill an innocent, your timing is off and you don't re-exert control in time, etc.). Good and neutral beings are going to weigh the need versus the risk. Evil beings don't really care if some rando gets killed and so aren't as bothered u the risks.

[Willie the Duck]

To me, this thread is both a demonstration of why a system loaded with intentional ambiguity and "trying to have it both ways" is begging for trouble, and a demonstration that D&D is a system for a particular sort of setting that tries to pretend it's not for marketing reasons.

On the former, the writers appear to be doing everything they can to hint that creating / animating undead is a thing evil characters do, but also fastidiously avoiding coming out and saying it. Maybe the players of the game are supposed to see it in that light and understand that it's going to be a subjective thing depending on the table, but I doubt it ever works out that way, especially given...

I'm not sure it's just for marketing reasons. Begging for trouble... only for over-analysts such as here. I am going to make wholly unsupported supposition: 99% of the people who play D&D could not give less of a white-hot tinker's damn about what we're discussing on this thread. They either like the genre convention of the creepy person with the zombies at their beck and call being the 'bad guy' who the PCs fight, or they think 'why would AD be in the PHB if you were not supposed to use it?' and run PC mages who use skeletons whenever they can get away with it (social reaction being the primary constraint). So far as I can tell, given that this game's make-or-break in terms of being a successful edition is that 99% (or whatever it really is), not us, I think the designers are being crazy like a fox.


The writers seem to try very hard to have the setting assumption of objective and cosmic Good and Evil baked into the assumed and unspoken setting, without entirely following through with the implications on the "material" plane and for "mortal" beings, and leaving things "subjective" for each table to decide...

Yes. Yes they have. It is probably just the tip of the iceberg of setting assumptions that don't meet rigorous scrutiny. D&D is, and always has been, the mongrel dog that work when people make it work, and don't think too hard (or simply deal with it at your own table) about the cosmology, ethics, economics, etc.


Would you say using any other necromancy spell is a evil act.

Personally, or per my reading of the game rules?


I can Concede how Reanimating a dead body can be seen as evil. Even though I disagree.

But how can a Cosmic energy have a Alignment.

Strictly by book fiat.

[Sigreid]

Another point, finger of death creates a zombie with no risk of losing control and has no similar note.

[ArkenBrony]

I’ve always viewed animate dead as illegal rather than evil. It requires graverobbing at worst and disrespect at best

[Naanomi]

Strictly by book fiat.
Well... in setting by Universe Fiat... many ultimate questions of physics and the like are answered by ‘that is just the way it is in this universe’; and both alignment and negative energies are part of the ‘physics’ of the Great Wheel

[Unoriginal]

I have no idea that "5e is trying to have it both way" argument is coming from.

The game is saying "X is green". Why are people trying to argue "the game is saying X is blue and yellow rather than just saying which color it truly is" ?


Would you say using any other necromancy spell is a evil act.


I can Concede how Reanimating a dead body can be seen as evil. Even though I disagree.

But how can a Cosmic energy have a Alignment.

No, the game is clear that necromancy in general isn't inherently evil or good.



Yes. Yes they have. It is probably just the tip of the iceberg of setting assumptions that don't meet rigorous scrutiny.

Willie the Duck, you've been respectful and eager to discuss this whole thread, and for doing so I thank you, but this right here is frankly insulting.


So *please*, could you explain how the statement "only evil people regularly enslave evil spirits to animate corpses, which will in turn continuously threaten all living beings they come across until they are destroyed" is an assumption that does not meet rigorous scrutiny?

[Willie the Duck]

I have no idea that "5e is trying to have it both way" argument is coming from.

The game is saying "X is green". Why are people trying to argue "the game is saying X is blue and yellow rather than just saying which color it truly is" ?

The game does not (even at a point where it very easily could) state that using Animate Dead is evil. The game, however, has the trappings of evil undead and the dark necromancers who control them in various ways in terms of the way it discusses the undead created, and who might regularly do so, maintaining the genre fiction that inspired them. Thus they are having it both ways by readily facilitating both people who want evil necromancers with their evil undead hordes as acceptable target adversaries for the PCs, and readily facilitate PC wizards who want to use skeleton archer spam as a tactically sound gaming strategy. I don't care if you agree with every underlying principle, do you at least understand how that can be understood as 'having it both ways?'


The game is saying "X is green". Why are people trying to argue "the game is saying X is blue and yellow rather than just saying which color it truly is" ?

That is not what anyone is doing. People are acknowledging that the game states that X is green. They are stating that it is still acting like it is blue and/or yellow in certain ways. This is a position you can agree or disagree with, but you stating that people are saying that is blue and yellow is simply not the case. By my estimation of the thread, no one else thinks that is what others are saying.

[Willie the Duck]

Willie the Duck, you've been respectful and eager to discuss this whole thread, and for doing so I thank you, but this right here is frankly insulting.


So *please*, could you explain how the statement "only evil people regularly enslave evil spirits to animate corpses, which will in turn continuously threaten all living beings they come across until they are destroyed" is an assumption that does not meet rigorous scrutiny?
You will have to forgive me for not being particularly moved by someone who has been trying to tell other people what they are saying is suddenly insulted. However, this is a case of straightforward you not interpreting what I am saying as referring to what I was personally trying to reference (note that I am not using the term misinterpreting, as I do not want to ascribe blame for this communication lapse). The phrase “objective and cosmic Good and Evil baked into the assumed and unspoken setting, without entirely following through with the implications on the "material" plane and for "mortal" beings, and leaving things "subjective" for each table to decide...” (so, the thing I was actively quoting) is the thing I was ascribing to “setting assumptions that don't meet rigorous scrutiny,” not a specific ruling on the evilness of animating dead. I was jumping on an orthogonal tangent about the game not really worrying too greatly about everything making sense, if you take everything to its logical conclusion. Game economics (and could a D&D blue collar laborer be able to feed themselves on their listed salary, etc.) being the most famous example, TSR-era D&D paladins put in no-win situations regarding falling being also famous, and the nightmarish ethical implications of BoVD and BoED-specific 3.5e being pretty notable as well.

So I am sorry that you felt insulted, but I was not talking about the clause you are referencing, but instead putting finer points on the general discussion of D&D ethics. Given that this was a point I was making to Max (someone I’ve repeatedly made larger-scale references to grander points in this thread as well as elsewhere), I’m a little perturbed that you took it as a personal slight. Do I have to be on guard for this at all times--that something I say to someone else that reasonably can be recognized as a large scale philosophical question will be interpreted by you as a personal insult? This is not a development I’m particularly pleased to see.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Well... in setting by Universe Fiat... many ultimate questions of physics and the like are answered by ‘that is just the way it is in this universe’; and both alignment and negative energies are part of the ‘physics’ of the Great Wheel

Exactly. Everything in these universes is the way it is by authorial fiat--that's inherent in them being fictional. So instead of asking why it's evil, ask instead "ok, what does that imply about the universe?"

Asking "why is raising undead evil" is like asking "why do we see light at 700 nm as being red?" It just is that way by the nature of the universe.

As a note, my universe doesn't even have positive or negative energy as a thing. Nor does it have alignment as a thing. Undead are "evil" (really just dangerous and inimical to life) because they're inherently hungry--their very existence drains the life out of everything around them and hastens the decay of matter. Areas infested by undead are almost sterile, drained of all life.

[Throne12]

I’ve always viewed animate dead as illegal rather than evil. It requires graverobbing at worst and disrespect at best

How is Disrespect at best?

There are many many other ways to get hold of a body or skeleton.
1.It can be a law that after death your body is given to a necromancer to command around and be a state used labor force. Where after your service contract is done your remains are buried.

2. It can be a religious ritual to give a necromancer aka high prest the body of a follower. To continue serving the religion.

[Unoriginal]

The game does not (even at a point where it very easily could) state that using Animate Dead is evil.

YES. Because, even though they could have made so, using Animate Dead non-frequently is NOT EVIL.

The game acknowledge that it is not evil. It is not good, but unless you don't do it frequently you're not evil.



, and readily facilitate PC wizards who want to use skeleton archer spam as a tactically sound gaming strategy.

No, the game does not facilitate that, because a PC wizard who use skeleton archer spam as a gaming strategy is frequently creating undead, and such, an evil person.




I don't care if you agree with every underlying principle, do you at least understand how that can be understood as 'having it both ways?'

No, I cannot. Because that would suppose that the game is implying "your PC can totally create zombies and skeletons for your Undead hectoPeasant steamroller whenever you have spell slots and corpses available, and they won't be evil", when the book is clearly, undeniably stating that no, only an evil PC (or NPC) would do that.




They are stating that it is still acting like it is blue and/or yellow in certain ways.

Which is an incorrect assertion.



This is a position you can agree or disagree with, but you stating that people are saying that is blue and yellow is simply not the case. By my estimation of the thread, no one else thinks that is what others are saying.

It seems that I was incorrect in which way other people were incorrect, then. I apologize for my mistake.

[Max_Killjoy]

Personally, I think at least as interesting a question would be about why the people in the setting see one, some, or all of the things done with necromancy as evil, and where they'd draw the line.

Raising the dead could be seen as a violation of fate, or thwarting the gods' will, or giving a second chance to those who don't deserve it.

Speaking with the dead could be seen as intruding on the afterlife, or trying to learn things only the gods are supposed to know.

Animating corpses could be seen as desecrating graves, or a mockery of life, or treading on the gods' role (of creating life) in a sick mockery.

[Max_Killjoy]

I have no idea that "5e is trying to have it both way" argument is coming from.

The game is saying "X is green". Why are people trying to argue "the game is saying X is blue and yellow rather than just saying which color it truly is" ?


Because the game text runs full steam straight ahead, via correlation implication and association, at the line of actually stating that animating undead is evil, skids to a halt, stands there on teetering tiptoes... and then steadfastly refuses to go the last milometer and actually make that statement.

So no matter how much correlation, implication, and association there is, there's always that out of "but we didn't SAY that animating undead is evil, did we?"

[Unoriginal]

Personally, I think at least as interesting a question would be about why the people in the setting see one, some, or all of the things done with necromancy as evil, and where they'd draw the line.

Raising the dead could be seen as a violation of fate, or thwarting the gods' will, or giving a second chance to those who don't deserve it.

Speaking with the dead could be seen as intruding on the afterlife, or trying to learn things only the gods are supposed to know.

Animating corpses could be seen as desecrating graves, or a mockery of life, or treading on the gods' role (of creating life) in a sick mockery.

That depends of the places, times and cultures, and it is an interesting subject to explore.

That being said, when it comes to the spells on the Cleric list, there would be a literal Word of God on the subject, for each religion. So probably some homogeneity is to be expected in places influenced by the same churches.


Because the game text runs full steam straight ahead, via correlation implication and association, at the line of actually stating that animating undead is evil, skids to a halt, stands there on teetering tiptoes... and then steadfastly refuses to go the last milometer and actually make that statement.

So no matter how much correlation, implication, and association there is, there's always that out of "but we didn't SAY that animating undead is evil, did we?"

Wrong.

The game does not say that casting Animate Undead once is evil, because it is not.

5e does not have a "one strike you're out" alignment system. Alignment describes a *typical behavior*.


And 5e clearly states, unequivocally, undeniable state that frequently creating undead is something only evil people do.

There is no out, no gotcha, no ambiguity except the one people want to be created around the question.

And if the argument is "but they don't define what 'frequently' means", give me a break, we all know what it means. If it's an habit or something you do with regularity (be it once a month or whenever you get the spell slots and the corpses), rather than something you do exceptionally, it is "frequently."


Wanting 5e to state "[any individual act] is evil/neutral/good" is equivalent to wanting 5e to have a different alignment system.

[Max_Killjoy]

Wrong.

The game does not say that casting Animate Undead once is evil, because it is not.

5e does not have a "one strike you're out" alignment system. Alignment describes a *typical behavior*.


And 5e clearly states, unequivocally, undeniable state that frequently creating undead is something only evil people do.

There is no out, no gotcha, no ambiguity except the one people want to be created around the question.

And if the argument is "but they don't define what 'frequently' means", give me a break, we all know what it means. If it's an habit or something you do with regularity (be it once a month or whenever you get the spell slots and the corpses), rather than something you do exceptionally, it is "frequently."


Wanting 5e to state "[any individual act] is evil/neutral/good" is equivalent to wanting 5e to have a different alignment system.


It's not about the alignment system. It's about having all the arrows point at one thing, and then conspicuously refusing to actually state that thing... implying something strongly while refusing to just say it... it's coy, and I don't care for coy in game texts.

Now, for me, while I'm sympathetic to the idea that good and evil can be fairly objective, and are not simply social constructs or fiat-from-on-high... I really don't have any use for the idea of Good and Evil as cosmic forces, or a setting with the sides drawn up and morality defined by cosmic jersey color instead of intent and action and effect.

So, I'm far more open to the argument that animating a bunch of skeletons and zombies is risky, and that a caster would be morally responsible for the death and suffering caused by zombies that got out of his control in the same way that someone using a flamethrower in combat in a drought-stricken forest would be morally responsible if it started a forest fire and burned down a bunch of houses -- flamethrowers aren't inherently evil, but as with any other tool there is a moral burden of responsible usage -- than I am to the assertion that the spell is "inherently evil because cosmic forces of mortality".



On the question of "frequently"... I guarantee you that there's quibbling at some D&D tables over what that means.

[Unoriginal]

You will have to forgive me for not being particularly moved by someone who has been trying to tell other people what they are saying is suddenly insulted. However, this is a case of straightforward you not interpreting what I am saying as referring to what I was personally trying to reference (note that I am not using the term misinterpreting, as I do not want to ascribe blame for this communication lapse). The phrase “objective and cosmic Good and Evil baked into the assumed and unspoken setting, without entirely following through with the implications on the "material" plane and for "mortal" beings, and leaving things "subjective" for each table to decide...” (so, the thing I was actively quoting) is the thing I was ascribing to “setting assumptions that don't meet rigorous scrutiny,” not a specific ruling on the evilness of animating dead. I was jumping on an orthogonal tangent about the game not really worrying too greatly about everything making sense, if you take everything to its logical conclusion. Game economics (and could a D&D blue collar laborer be able to feed themselves on their listed salary, etc.) being the most famous example, TSR-era D&D paladins put in no-win situations regarding falling being also famous, and the nightmarish ethical implications of BoVD and BoED-specific 3.5e being pretty notable as well.

Then I sincerely apologize, I misunderstood what you said.



So I am sorry that you felt insulted, but I was not talking about the clause you are referencing, but instead putting finer points on the general discussion of D&D ethics. Given that this was a point I was making to Max (someone I’ve repeatedly made larger-scale references to grander points in this thread as well as elsewhere), I’m a little perturbed that you took it as a personal slight. Do I have to be on guard for this at all times--that something I say to someone else that reasonably can be recognized as a large scale philosophical question will be interpreted by you as a personal insult? This is not a development I’m particularly pleased to see.

I thought you meant that the question of undead creation as being an evildoer activity did not hold up to scrutiny, which I found insulting after eight pages of dissecting the idea and multiple book quotes from people who made the effort to bring references.

Obviously I was wrong, and there is nothing insulting about your original statement. Once again, I apologize for that.

And of course, I'll do my best so there is no reason to be on guard about me feeling insulted by large-scale philosophical questions in the future.

[JoeJ]

What I see is that undead in 5e are not robots. They are sentient beings, and AFAIK every form of undead that can be created by a spell has an alignment that is some version of evil. It says so right in their stat blocks. That meams every spell that creates undead actually brings into existence an evil creature. There is no scenario in which creating an evil creature can be a good act, but there are situations where it can be justified as the lesser evil. The statement that only evil characters will cast these spells frequently is therefore a statement about the default expectation of D&D worlds, that situations where creating undead really is the lesser evil will not be common.

[KorvinStarmast]

99% of the people who play D&D could not give less of a white-hot tinker's damn about what we're discussing on this thread. Aye.

They either like the genre convention of the creepy person with the zombies at their beck and call being the 'bad guy' who the PCs fight, or they think 'why would AD be in the PHB if you were not supposed to use it?' and run PC mages who use skeletons whenever they can get away with it (social reaction being the primary constraint). Each table is its own instance of the game, aye.
So far as I can tell, given that this game's make-or-break in terms of being a successful edition is that 99% (or whatever it really is), not us. Oft forgotten in the frenzy of posting ...

I think the designers are being crazy like a fox. They set it up to have it both ways, as long as it's fun. :smallcool:

[Willie the Duck]

Then I sincerely apologize, I misunderstood what you said.

Thank you. This topic is clearly an issue for you, and I think you've been... perhaps over-interpreting more than a few things said. But it comes with the territory.


What I see is that undead in 5e are not robots. They are sentient beings, and AFAIK every form of undead that can be created by a spell has an alignment that is some version of evil. It says so right in their stat blocks. That meams every spell that creates undead actually brings into existence an evil creature. There is no scenario in which creating an evil creature can be a good act, but there are situations where it can be justified as the lesser evil. The statement that only evil characters will cast these spells frequently is therefore a statement about the default expectation of D&D worlds, that situations where creating undead really is the lesser evil will not be common.

This is certainly a reasonable and germane-to-the-general-concept explanation.

[Naanomi]

Now, for me, while I'm sympathetic to the idea that good and evil can be fairly objective, and are not simply social constructs or fiat-from-on-high... I really don't have any use for the idea of Good and Evil as cosmic forces, or a setting with the sides drawn up and morality defined by cosmic jersey color instead of intent and action and effect.
Which is fine at anyone’s table at any time; but is *not* the default assumption of the Great Wheel Cosmology that is the default backdrop of 5e (at least that Alignment is in some ways a cosmic force)

[Unoriginal]

The statement that only evil characters will cast these spells frequently is therefore a statement about the default expectation of D&D worlds, that situations where creating undead really is the lesser evil will not be common.

Well, the thing is that the lesser of two evils is still evil.

You can ally with a Death Knight and their army of undead to stop Asmodeus from taking over the world, but the Death Knight would still be evil (unless they find redemption while fighting the devils and stop being a Death Knight).

Uh, that could be a fun campaign premise.

[Max_Killjoy]

Which is fine at anyone’s table at any time; but is *not* the default assumption of the Great Wheel Cosmology that is the default backdrop of 5e (at least that Alignment is in some ways a cosmic force)

Which gets us back to the "is but isn't" default setting that underlies D&D as a system, and trying to have it both ways -- as someone has sigged on these forums (paraphrasing), D&D is a great system for doing D&D fantasy, but isn't as universal as it likes to pretend.

[Unoriginal]

D&D is a great system for doing D&D fantasy, but isn't as universal as it likes to pretend.

D&D has stopped pretending that after 3.X, which really tried to be universalist.

Thanks all the gods and their angels 5e didn't try again.

[JoeJ]

Well, the thing is that the lesser of two evils is still evil.

You can ally with a Death Knight and their army of undead to stop Asmodeus from taking over the world, but the Death Knight would still be evil (unless they find redemption while fighting the devils and stop being a Death Knight).

Uh, that could be a fun campaign premise.

Absolutely. And it's certainly possible to imagine a world in which, for example, wizards spend all their time creating undead armies in a desperate attempt to stop a demonic eruption from growing and consuming the entire world. That would not be the kind of world that the devs. expected would be the norm, however.

[Max_Killjoy]

D&D has stopped pretending that after 3.X, which really tried to be universalist.

Thanks all the gods and their angels 5e didn't try again.

I'm still catching up*, but between what I'm reading in PHB etc, and how people describe it here, it doesn't feel like it gave up that "have it both ways".

* I'm just now getting familiar with 5e, between bad experiences with every edition up to 3.x and everything about 4e, I gave up on D&D for a very long time.

[noob]

I think all the mind controlling enchantment spells should be roughly as much evil as conjuration spells(so extremely evil and twisted)

[Max_Killjoy]

I think all the mind controlling enchantment spells should be roughly as much evil as conjuration spells(so extremely evil and twisted)


There might be a limited and uncommon set of circumstances in which those spells would be the lesser of two evils.

(Recurring pattern here it seems.)

[Willie the Duck]

I'm still catching up*, but between what I'm reading in PHB etc, and how people describe it here, it doesn't feel like it gave up that "have it both ways".

* I'm just now getting familiar with 5e, between bad experiences with every edition up to 3.x and everything about 4e, I gave up on D&D for a very long time.

He's talking specific to your reference to D&D is good for D&D fantasy (emphasis on the fantasy part, not the more holistic D&D fantasy).

D&D, during the 3e era, tried to spool itself off into modern day gaming and various sci-fi games. Lots of other games (like Traveller, Gamma World, etc.) tried to port the game (setting and playstyle) over to the D20 mechanics. 5e did not try to do that.

As to D&D doing D&D fantasy, well, yes. D&D is D&D and it best emulates D&D, warts (and color-coded dragons) and all.