Would an item that creates undead be inherently evil?

[holywhippet]

I'm playing through the Sunless citadel (from Tales of the Yawning Portal) and I've found a whistle that can create undead (within certain limits). Generally speaking though, isn't creating undead an evil action? My cleric is lawful good so I figure he'd have a certain distaste towards the item. For that matter, he's also a hill dwarf and I think the whistle was supposedly made by grey dwarves.

[CharacterIV]

Yes, a LG Hill Dwarf Cleric would not be a fan of a necromantic Duergar whistle. If he were War domain, MAYYYBE he makes a pragmatic decision it might be worth it to use, but most likely he'd wanna smash it with a warhammer.

But I don't think ALL items that create undead would be inherently evil. It really depends on the campaign and pantheon; if the God of Death and/or the Afterlife is a guardian type, an Osiris/Anubis figure or something like that, then it stands to reason holy icons that create undead would be more aligned with the God's particular stance.

But in the "standard" D&D Cosmology, pretty much all undead have a link to the Negative Energy Plane, so yeah... evil.

[Phhase]

Depends on how undead work.

If you ascribe to the "Undead and negative energy are the essence of evil itself, and you cannot raise a character who was zombified" school, then the item is, yeah, evil.

If you ascribe to the "Undead are just yucky sock puppets powered by destructive energy" school, then the item is really just "gross neutral" aligned.

[Gastronomie]

The answer here would be "ask the DM", because how evil an act would be depends on the setting.

If your DM considers necromancy in his world to be tied to the negative energy plane (thus polluting the material world with its negative influence whenever used), that could be evil.

If your DM doesn't think so in the world setting for your campaign, the act would not be necessarily evil. Using zombies as warriors to fight monsters instead of normal soldiers can reduce the number of deaths, and having them work in mines 24/7 can help the economy. Of course, assuming they're always under control...

[Chrizzt]

I think it also hinges on the question about what happens when someone is animated as undead.

In previous editions, skeletons and zombies had no intelligence score and hence no true sentience.

In 5e, they have.

If animating a zombie forcefully sucks a (part of) the soul of the once living person back into the body, then it stands to reason that it is inherently evil (consent of good or neutral gods of death might turn the table, I'm not sure). This is not given in the spell description, so it depends on your background assumptions.

In regular raising spells the subject can deny being raised. They can't deny being animated.