The evil of Lawful Good

[Psyren]

*rolls eyes*

Yes, tying vows (other than strict pacifism) to Goodness was silly. But there's still value in a book that says things like "compulsions aren't inherently bad, but carry a tremendous ethical responsibility" and "you can't redeem yourself just by casting a bunch of [Good] spells in succession" and "attacking evil orcs without provocation or cause is not a good act." In short, there's a baby in that bathwater.

And I strongly suggest we try to steer clear of what is "real-world, real-life morally offensive."

[FaerieGodfather]

In short, there's a baby in that bathwater.

Conceded that the books do actually say some worthwhile things, I would argue that the amount of sheer boneheaded nonsense in them should prevent us from using them as primary sources when discussing alignment if we want our discussion to make any kind of sense and our conclusions to provide helpful guidelines at the gaming table.

I'll be honest: I've got an axe to grind here and I'm going to keep grinding it. The alignment rules have been hot garbage since AD&D first linked them to class abilities and roleplaying penalties, and have only gotten worse as subsequent designers have tried to rationalize them. They are bad, they have always been bad, and the D&D game has been greatly improved by their de facto elimination.

edit: Cheap shot was cheap. Sorry if you saw it first.

[Lacco]

I'm trying to wrap your head around what kind of person, playing a game that they care about, decides to play a character who doesn't care about the game they live in. And how having characters who don't care about decisions being made and other game events is anything but a terrible idea. And how having characters that don't care prevents intra-party conflict from arising when different players have different ideas of what should be done.
I'm also trying to figure out what you mean by "decision". Do you mean the specific action taken, and you're splitting hairs over the alleged difference between caring about what action is taken and the results of said action? Because that's a friggin' fine hair to split!
Basically, this sounds like a load of nonsense, and you need to do some more explaining about what the heck you mean by this stuff before I can accept it as even a possibility.


My interpretation of Quertus' statements was that the character cares - but only as far as player cares. And player cares more about the group than about the character's character.

Consider these two extreme options (2 players vs. 2 characters):
Option A - there is a character that has a hard-coded moral imperative of "All evil must be smashed!" and another that has "All creatures may atone and live in peace!". Enter group of goblin children. The two are potentially in conflict. But it is their players who created them - and basically "rule" their every thought and action - so if one of them finds a reason to ignore their moral imperative, no conflict occurs.
But one of them will be "But my character would do that!" and the other would be "But my character would never do that!" and one of them would have to find a more-or-less convoluted reason for it to happen.

Option B - there are two players that have different interests. Their characters are just a set of mechanics. One of them wants to smash all evil, the other wants to see a story of evil creatures atoning and living in peace. Enter group of goblin children. Smasher shouts "I roll initiative!" and Atoner tells him "Stop, let's see if they are evil and then smash!" and they happily do so - there is no character motivation to do either, only players' interests.

Of course, being extremes, these are not realistic: of course the characters will have their own goals, interests, attitude and personality - it's roleplaying after all - but they should be morally flexible. Maybe the paladin will give the goblin kids a break, maybe the atoner will decide that these ones are beyond saving. But the characters will not dictate the players actions that lead to intra-party conflict.

...or maybe I misunderstand :smallbiggrin:

This issue also nicely reflects the topic of mature games - basically the whole debate about alignments is about "what mature themes we want in the game?". Is necromancy evil? Or are skeletons hilarious? Does the result justify the means, so a necromancer that protects the village with militia made out of local cementery could be neutral? Or is it automatically so deep you will ping on each paladin's evildar?

[PersonMan]

I'm trying to wrap your head around what kind of person, playing a game that they care about, decides to play a character who doesn't care about the game they live in. And how having characters who don't care about decisions being made and other game events is anything but a terrible idea. And how having characters that don't care prevents intra-party conflict from arising when different players have different ideas of what should be done.
I'm also trying to figure out what you mean by "decision". Do you mean the specific action taken, and you're splitting hairs over the alleged difference between caring about what action is taken and the results of said action? Because that's a friggin' fine hair to split!
Basically, this sounds like a load of nonsense, and you need to do some more explaining about what the heck you mean by this stuff before I can accept it as even a possibility.

As far as I can tell, Quertus is basically saying:


Characters with scruples are those which feel compelled to act in a certain way, in certain situations.
Those with these scruples are therefore more likely to ignite intraparty conflict with a character that has different scruples - and is therefore compelled to act in a different, mutually exclusive manner.
Meanwhile, characters without scruples are those who are not compelled to act in any specific way; as a result, they can pick whichever course of action is most beneficial or least likely to cause intraparty conflict.
These characters without scruples care about the results of the decisions being made, but not about the actions taken to get those results; effectively "the ends justify the means", but without any need to justify the means.

[Segev]

1) Why would you atone if your action only good intent and good results (like animating some skeletons to save the world, only using them against the BBED's forces in that one battle and then deanimating them, or whatever)? Because some nitwit deity or self-important cosmic "judge" ruled stuck an "Evil" tag on the means you used?

This is one reason I keep trying to determine a fluff effect that a) makes the actual act of animating the dead inescapably (but perhaps minorly) evil, and b) doesn't have fridge-realizations that make animate dead ludicrously powerful for a 4th level spell to the point that you might wind up seeing people casting it for the fluff "side effect."

It can't be that it forces the soul of the former inhabitant of the corpse back into it, but as a mute and helpless passenger; that's way too strong in metaphysical terms even if the mechanical effect fits and isn't all that powerful compared to "mindless negative energy animating force."

"It leaks a little bit of EEHEEHEEVIL into the world every time you do it" reads too much like balancing a checkbook. "Is the good I'm doing greater than the nebulous, unspecified evil that cannot be measurably connected to expressly evil things beyond 'evil energy' levels?" No, having "evil energy" be a thing just pushes the question off: how is "evil energy" actually evil, beyond bearing the label? What harm to innocents does it actually do? If it's just "increasing negative energy," it should have the [negative energy] tag, not the [evil] tag; they ARE distinct things.

It isn't sufficient to say that the created animate dead are prone to hurting the living if left to their own devices; casting the spell wouldn't be evil, then. It's perfectly possible to responsibly control your skeletons and zombies and put them down before you lose any control. And if "taking the risk" is inherently evil, then brandishing a sword is inherently evil because it COULD accidentally hurt somebody who didn't deserve it. So no, this isn't sufficient, either. It has to be something regretable that the actual act of casting the spell causes. Something beyond "create a mindless servant who will fight for me," since unseen servant doesn't have the [evil] tag.

The best I've come up with is that it doesn't pull a full soul back, but it splits the original inhabitant's soul between places. Assuming they're otherwise enjoying their afterlife, this causes the dead spirit to feel a sharp pain and a sense of separation, and to become aware, at least peripherally, of what its body is being compelled to do. It may or may not get useful information out of it, but it makes for a continual bit of discomfort and spiritual drain. Not to mention distraction. And it also DOES give those which are powerful or strong-willed enough the ability to gather information, evne if they're helpless to prevent it. But they're still mostly in the afterlife.

This, incidentally, pisses off ghosts and wraiths and other incorporeal undead, because they do feel the connection to their zombified corpse or animated skeleton and will be motivated to some extent to hunt it down (unless, you know, they volunteered for it and are exploiting it somehow).

Any evil men and women animated as undead are potential fiends who now have eyes and ears on the world. Any good men and women thus used still experience being enslaved. You might suggest that LG folks could give consent to heroically dedicate their bodies (and a piece of their soul) to The Cause and enable LG clerics and wizards to animate their corpses. And maybe that's feasible and would ameleorate the [evil] tag. Heck, maybe that's the cause of "good undead" and the like. But it probably takes special care to provide the heroic dead their release when their service is done. Maybe it even does real damage to the soul, and they won't get the piece back. Forever losing...something...of themselves. Even if the Outsider they become eventually grows it back, it won't be quite the same. It's a maiming.

Evil outsiders may be fine with this for...the right selfish purpose. Maybe good outsiders, too, for the greater good. But it's still...icky. And probably not worth it for most purposes, not to the Outsider. Hence why it bears the [evil] tag.

[HouseRules]

Animate Dead - Isn't that just Organ Donation in modern terms?

What makes it evil or neutral with evil leaning?

[Psyren]

"It leaks a little bit of EEHEEHEEVIL into the world every time you do it" reads too much like balancing a checkbook. "Is the good I'm doing greater than the nebulous, unspecified evil that cannot be measurably connected to expressly evil things beyond 'evil energy' levels?" No, having "evil energy" be a thing just pushes the question off: how is "evil energy" actually evil, beyond bearing the label? What harm to innocents does it actually do? If it's just "increasing negative energy," it should have the [negative energy] tag, not the [evil] tag; they ARE distinct things.

Per Libris Mortis, the harm it does to innocents is by making it more likely for malevolent uncontrolled undead to randomly appear, which in turn makes them more likely to appear in places that are ill-equipped to handle them. Consider that a single shadow can entirely wipe out a remote hamlet before they could mount any kind of adequate defense against it; if you knew for a fact that your actions might make that scenario more likely, you'd have a moral imperative to not do those actions, just like you'd have a moral imperative not to dump radioactive waste into a random pond because you don't know where the groundwater will ultimately end up. Just like negative energy itself, radioactive materials don't have an alignment, but not caring where you put them is a moral act all the same.



It isn't sufficient to say that the created animate dead are prone to hurting the living if left to their own devices; casting the spell wouldn't be evil, then. It's perfectly possible to responsibly control your skeletons and zombies and put them down before you lose any control. And if "taking the risk" is inherently evil, then brandishing a sword is inherently evil because it COULD accidentally hurt somebody who didn't deserve it.

Brandishing a sword doesn't carry an increased chance of an uncontrolled sword randomly appearing somewhere else on the material plane though, no matter how many people do that. So this isn't the best analogy.

[Max_Killjoy]

Per Libris Mortis, the harm it does to innocents is by making it more likely for malevolent uncontrolled undead to randomly appear, which in turn makes them more likely to appear in places that are ill-equipped to handle them. Consider that a single shadow can entirely wipe out a remote hamlet before they could mount any kind of adequate defense against it; if you knew for a fact that your actions might make that scenario more likely, you'd have a moral imperative to not do those actions, just like you'd have a moral imperative not to dump radioactive waste into a random pond because you don't know where the groundwater will ultimately end up. Just like negative energy itself, radioactive materials don't have an alignment, but not caring where you put them is a moral act all the same.


By that standard, fireball and meteor swarm are "inherently evil" because they might light the neighborhood or forest on fire, "no matter how careful you are"...




Brandishing a sword doesn't carry an increased chance of an uncontrolled sword randomly appearing somewhere else on the material plane though, no matter how many people do that. So this isn't the best analogy.


It's also as far as I can tell the "it makes other undead more likely to appear" thing is just a back-constructed justification for the "but it's evil" position, tacked on in secondary sourcebooks after the fact, because the authors wanted "icky death magic" to be "inherently evil".

Could just as easily tack on a thing about "the fire magic involved in a fireball leaks into the world, increasing the chance of spontaneous combustion and volcanic eruptions".

[Anymage]

Huge swaths of D&D morality are slapped together and shoddily done. Some bits around the edges you can maybe find apologetics for (E.G: Exalted feats aren't because being a chaste vegetarian makes you morally superior, and more because forsaking a temptation that may lead you off the straight and narrow makes you better at resisting similar temptations), but the whole thing falls apart into a mess as soon as you try thinking it through. Cartoon morality designed to give clear good guys and bad guys tends to do that when you apply any real complexity.

On the specific note of undead I'm okay with them starting from a place of wanting them to be evil (because dead things are icky) and creating justifications from there. I'm similarly okay with class below the granularity of the rules in a single instance becoming problematic en masse (compare the exhaust of a single car with the exhaust of a city full), and/or problems that can be staved off indefinitely in ideal situations but that become hubristic when you assume that ideal situations will persist forever.

[Beleriphon]

Huge swaths of D&D morality are slapped together and shoddily done. Some bits around the edges you can maybe find apologetics for (E.G: Exalted tests aren't because being a chaste vegetarian makes you morally superior, and more because forsaking a temptation that may lead you off the straight and narrow makes you better at resisting similar temptations), but the whole thing falls apart into a mess as soon as you try thinking it through. Cartoon morality designed to give clear good guys and bad guys tends to do that when you apply any real complexity.

I think the main difference, and the rationale, is that animating a corpse is giving a semblance of life to the dead. Willy Warlock and the Undead Factory isn't returning Grandpa Joe to life, he's animating Grandpa Joe's corpse to do something. Generally speaking the idea that I get is that animating a corpse is using a dead body for something, as opposed to bringing a person back from there dead.

If you look at the kind of media that D&D is based on nobody that animates skeletons and zombies to do their bidding is a good person, and I'd say a good 99% of the time the magic to animate the dead is considered "black" or "dark" magic and implicitly evil.

[Anymage]

If you look at the kind of media that D&D is based on nobody that animates skeletons and zombies to do their bidding is a good person, and I'd say a good 99% of the time the magic to animate the dead is considered "black" or "dark" magic and implicitly evil.

One faction in the eternal argument on the morality of Animate Dead argues that nothing in the rules (at least for 3.x) gives a clear consequentialist reason why undead are fundamentally any different from robots or Unseen Servants. The other faction notes precisely those "necromancy has a long history of being shown as dark magic" as well as plenty of points showing developer intent, and is trying to show what exactly makes it evil. (Without going into "it's evil because the creator gods arbitrarily decreed certain things to be good and others evil", because morality by divine fiat also creates piles of moral philosophy problems.)

I'm okay with the 5e solution of making them incredibly risky. It isn't intrinsically evil, but taking such a risk is not a good act and being reckless with that risk (by creating more undead than you can personally keep track of and not responsibly disposing of them as soon as you're able) becomes increasingly hard to morally justify. Some other people will want more immediate and unavoidable problems, while others still want to work with just what the book says. There's no way to make everyone happy.

[Psyren]

It's also as far as I can tell the "it makes other undead more likely to appear" thing is just a back-constructed justification for the "but it's evil" position, tacked on in secondary sourcebooks after the fact, because the authors wanted "icky death magic" to be "inherently evil".

Could just as easily tack on a thing about "the fire magic involved in a fireball leaks into the world, increasing the chance of spontaneous combustion and volcanic eruptions".

I have little doubt that you're correct and that it's a retroactive justification, or at the very least retroactively fleshing out something that was only vague before. (BoVD originated this concept and predates all of 3.5, including the PHB.) What I don't see is why that's a problem. The designers made the choice that undead and the act of creating them should be generally evil in their game; even if they only came up with this rationale later when people asked why, that makes it no less valid.

For me personally, I'm a fan of explanations that fit with the text (see my sig) and that help to explain the world we play in (necromancers being distrusted at best and actively persecuted at worst, in a way that evokers just aren't.) Speaking of which...


By that standard, fireball and meteor swarm are "inherently evil" because they might light the neighborhood or forest on fire, "no matter how careful you are"...

This analogy doesn't work because you're still conflating the direct effects of the spell (a fireball setting something it hits on fire) and the indirect effects. If fireball caused random fires to appear somewhere in the world that you couldn't even plan for, AND said indirect fire did nothing but actively seek out the living, AND every living being that fire kills could then lead to more fire popping up in the world to do the same thing (and in some cases, the victim becomes fire themselves), AND the fire could last indefinitely without this living fuel but ceaselessly craved it anyway such that the problem can't be ignored... then you might have an argument that these are similar. But they're not. Fireball and Meteor Swarm do none of those things.

[Max_Killjoy]

I have little doubt that you're correct and that it's a retroactive justification, or at the very least retroactively fleshing out something that was only vague before. (BoVD originated this concept and predates all of 3.5, including the PHB.) What I don't see is why that's a problem. The designers made the choice that undead and the act of creating them should be generally evil in their game; even if they only came up with this rationale later when people asked why, that makes it no less valid.

For me personally, I'm a fan of explanations that fit with the text (see my sig) and that help to explain the world we play in (necromancers being distrusted at best and actively persecuted at worst, in a way that evokers just aren't.) Speaking of which...



This analogy doesn't work because you're still conflating the direct effects of the spell (a fireball setting something it hits on fire) and the indirect effects. If fireball caused random fires to appear somewhere in the world that you couldn't even plan for, AND said indirect fire did nothing but actively seek out the living, AND every living being that fire kills could then lead to more fire popping up in the world to do the same thing (and in some cases, the victim becomes fire themselves), AND the fire could last indefinitely without this living fuel but ceaselessly craved it anyway such that the problem can't be ignored... then you might have an argument that these are similar. But they're not. Fireball and Meteor Swarm do none of those things.

As I said, they could just as easily have those things tacked on, as they were tacked on to various forms of necromancy.

Look, if someone wants their setting to explicitly say creating the undead is evil, for actual reasons that go beyond vague notions of taint or "death is icky bad" or "disturbing the natural order, because we said so", then that's fine. But D&D has this long history of trying to have it both ways, of being coy with its own facts, and it's irksome.

[Beleriphon]

This analogy doesn't work because you're still conflating the direct effects of the spell (a fireball setting something it hits on fire) and the indirect effects. If fireball caused random fires to appear somewhere in the world that you couldn't even plan for, AND said indirect fire did nothing but actively seek out the living, AND every living being that fire kills could then lead to more fire popping up in the world to do the same thing (and in some cases, the victim becomes fire themselves), AND the fire could last indefinitely without this living fuel but ceaselessly craved it anyway such that the problem can't be ignored... then you might have an argument that these are similar. But they're not. Fireball and Meteor Swarm do none of those things.

In fact I'd take it a step further, I suspect that Gygax and Co. didn't call this out in the rules because they assume it was obvious, and state that animating the dead is unnatural. The undead are breaking the natural order of things. Originally animate dead was a wizard spell, while the cleric could bring a person back to life. One is presented as an unnatural perversion of the natural order of life, while the other is presented as a miracle granted by a deity.

To whit: Pelor granting a Charlie Cleric the ability to the power to restore to life his fallen comrade Augustus is different than Willy Warlock using his magic to turn Grandpa Joe's corpse into a zombie puppet to help run his Undead Chocolate Factory (yes the chocolate is undead, don't ask). This is a presentation issue since I can see arguments either way, especially since no version of D&D actually says anything about why animating the dead is evil.

[Psyren]

As I said, they could just as easily have those things tacked on, as they were tacked on to various forms of necromancy.

Look, if someone wants their setting to explicitly say creating the undead is evil, for actual reasons that go beyond vague notions of taint or "death is icky bad" or "disturbing the natural order, because we said so", then that's fine. But D&D has this long history of trying to have it both ways, of being coy with its own facts, and it's irksome.

I still don't see how Libris Mortis is being vague about it.


...especially since no version of D&D actually says anything about why animating the dead is evil.

3e does as stated above.

[Malphegor]

On the original example of looting the dead, it IS strongly implied in some ofthe books that natural undead appear when a person is wronged after death, so I suppose a culture that’s used to a Greedwight or whatever rising when someone loots bodies without consent would be more militant in ensuring
evil creatures do not arise from petty evils

[Max_Killjoy]

I still don't see how Libris Mortis is being vague about it.


I still don't see why you're fixating on one book from a single dead edition published 15 years ago, when the rest of the publication history is all over the place on what even counts as necromancy (see, editions where HEALING is necromancy, and therefore evidently evil?) and what counts as evil and how alignment works and so on.

[Psyren]

On the original example of looting the dead, it IS strongly implied in some ofthe books that natural undead appear when a person is wronged after death, so I suppose a culture that’s used to a Greedwight or whatever rising when someone loots bodies without consent would be more militant in ensuring
evil creatures do not arise from petty evils

While that's true, there's probably also an undead related to betraying your looting companion by chopping them in the back of the head with no warning :smallbiggrin:

Clearly the solution is to avoid lethal damage at all times!


I still don't see why you're fixating on one book from a single dead edition published 15 years ago, when the rest of the publication history is all over the place on what even counts as necromancy (see, editions where HEALING is necromancy, and therefore evidently evil?) and what counts as evil and how alignment works and so on.

Because it provides a justification from the designers. 5e meanwhile says "put this on your list of things to explain DM, you're a designer too now!" and 4e says "necromancy, what kind of blasting spell is that?"

[Segev]

I still don't see how Libris Mortis is being vague about it.



3e does as stated above.

My main problem with Libris Mortis's ruling on it is that it's vague as to how much impact a given casting has.

"Spontaneous undead happen to some unspecified degree, and this degree increases by an unspecified amount when there are more undead in a region." This doesn't even directly connect to animate dead, mind you. Casting the spell doesn't directly make it more likely for spontaneous undead to occur; the increased number of undead makes them more likely to spontaneously arise near your undead minions, but the amount? Not really given. If I have to cast it "regularly" to slip from Good to Evil, how many undead beyond those I've directly animated am I actively responsible for? Is it a worldwide phenomenon? Do +100 skeletons in Waterdeep result in a greater chance that a ghoul will spontaneously arise from the leftovers a cannibal tribe left to ferment in Chult? Or is it more local, and only more likely that a zombie will rise from that adventurer who was strung up in Skullport last night? Or is it more local still, and the chances are only higher that some poor sot my evil necromancer has his minions kill will spontaneously rise as a zombie?

It's vague in the sense that you may as well claim that it's evil to wear metal armor because the more metal armor there is in the world, the weaker druid magic becomes worldwide. How do we know this? Uh, because we say so. Does your character refraining from wearing metal armor make ANY difference to this? No, probably not.

If I play a necromancer who doesn't mind the problem that others will have to deal with more spontaneously-animated dead in the world for the fact that I have tons of minions, will it ever even be NOTICEABLE that my prolific usage of animate dead has increased the number of spontaneous undead in the setting? Or is this more like spitting into the ocean, where the measurable impact is negligible to nonexistent?

If you're a DM of a game with a necromancer player in it, how would you demonstrate the evil effect of his abundant animations has on the world? To what degree?

[Psyren]

It's vague on quantifying the effects, sure. But it's crystal clear that there is an effect. How much of one is definitely something you can leave up to a given campaign, just like you can be vague about how many trees you can despoil before Silvanus sends some followers over to get you to cut it out, or how many magic items you can destroy before Mystra gets peeved.

[Koo Rehtorb]

I still don't see why you're fixating on one book from a single dead edition published 15 years ago, when the rest of the publication history is all over the place on what even counts as necromancy (see, editions where HEALING is necromancy, and therefore evidently evil?) and what counts as evil and how alignment works and so on.

Necromancy as a whole has never been evil. Certain subsets of the necromancy school of magic are inherently evil.

[Segev]

It's vague on quantifying the effects, sure. But it's crystal clear that there is an effect. How much of one is definitely something you can leave up to a given campaign, just like you can be vague about how many trees you can despoil before Silvanus sends some followers over to get you to cut it out, or how many magic items you can destroy before Mystra gets peeved.

The trouble is that growing crops depletes the soil, unless you know how to do crop rotation. This makes it less likely that there will be enough food next year for everyone, so you have to raise prices and more people will starve. Does that make planting crops without crop rotation evil? What if you lack access to any of the replenishment crops? Is farming now evil?

With as vague as they are on the amount, the notion that "it's evil" feels strained and very much "er, becasue we say so." It's right up there with [redacted per a warning from Great Wyrm below] claims that the decrease in [redacted] has led to [redacted bad thing]. Every [redacted] you take off the [redacted] [causes redacted bad thing] by some amount! How much? Obviously too small to accurately measure. But it's totally evil to reduce [redacted], because it makes the world [redacted bad thing]!

If animating the dead does have a notable effect, it should be exploitable. My minionmancer wields Chain command undead backed by Slaymates for cheaper casting; he's thrilled to have more spontaneous undead arise to bring under his control. Just how does he maximize this increase in spontaneous animations? He'd like to get the numbers doing so in his personal reach up by significant - and thus noticeable - amounts.

It is my contention that, if the supposedly evil or deliterious effect cannot have a notable impact on the game, calling it "evil" is essentially meaningless. It's no better than "because we say so." The correlation is asserted, but not demonstrated.

[Lord Raziere]

I mean directionless "people have the right to say whatever is evil in their setting however they want" talk aside....( its only useful for discussing what currently exists, not how things can be done better, and why bother with any other than the best?)

undeath and resurrection are kind of one of those things that make good and evil look more like meaningless labels rather than actual cosmic forces with different objectives and methods. if they both have basically the same power, when that power gets similar enough to one another, at some point the whole thing just looks like a war of aesthetics, and good is just arbitrarily the thing of all the light, fair skinned, non-ugly, clean-looking and such and so on people while Evil starts to look the thing of the dark aesthetic, ugly-looking spiked things. cure and inflict spells are just color flipped versions of each other that if you make everyone evil into undead, would function the exact same way as cure light wounds only in reverse.

DnD in short has a very odd obsession with being perfectly symmetrical in its cosmology and setting design. when really it could benefit from being more asymmetrical to better differentiate this and that, more effort to make good actually good and evil actually evil. so that you don't NEED the color-coding to tell whether they're evil or not, they just ARE evil because they are well designed enough to not need the question.

same principle applies to necromancy, why does the book need to specify they are evil? because otherwise there is no reason why they should be. which is bad, because generally you don't want people to resort to that kind of "well this label is here so we have to obey it" reasoning. now there are side effect sure, but the problem with these side effects is that they are very "background pollution" type of consequences. sure its a problem, but the evil side effects don't really immediately impact the game, so it might as well not exist at all. like so what if a necromancer raising a skeleton causes some evil energy to increase slightly somewhere else, unless your willing to play that out in campaign and actually tell what that looks like and how that impacts the players, its all just vague "you screwed up in some imperceptible way that doesn't really impact anything your doing." and without that personal impact, there is no impact at all. its like saying to a child that if they do a bad thing you'll punish some some random kid in another city, they don't know this kid your talking about and don't care, so its meaningless. it has no bite, no effect, therefore it doesn't really exist. for a player to care, the consequences have to be clear, immediate and have personal or close impact. like, for example:

"ok you begin the necromantic ritual. people around you begin screaming in agony as you drain the life force out of them for 1d6 points of damage per round to power it, do you continue?"

otherwise, you might as well throw out the aesthetic based morality, get rid of alignment and just make the DnD world run on whatever morality people want which will probably be more reasonable and well thought out than the cosmological mess, or at least allow people to have whatever fun they want. I for one do not like aesthetics based morality in any form, let me fight evil with darkness if I want to.

[Psyren]

The trouble is that growing crops depletes the soil, unless you know how to do crop rotation. This makes it less likely that there will be enough food next year for everyone, so you have to raise prices and more people will starve. Does that make planting crops without crop rotation evil? What if you lack access to any of the replenishment crops? Is farming now evil?

Does depleting your own soil cause an unknown amount of soil in an unknowable principality to also fail? Does that depleted soil then actively seek out even more living beings to malnourish and starve, endlessly until stopped?

That's why I don't find any of these analogies to be particularly relevant.

[Segev]

Does depleting your own soil cause an unknown amount of soil in an unknowable principality to also fail? Does that depleted soil then actively seek out even more living beings to malnourish and starve, endlessly until stopped?

That's why I don't find any of these analogies to be particularly relevant.

I could make a comparison, but I would be stepping into real-world politics.

Suffice it to say, with its vaguess, I don't know that Libris Mortis is asserting that undead will spontaneously arise as you describe here, either. What's the range? 1 foot per HD? 1 mile around each individual undead? continental? Worldwide? Planar? Multiversal? If I put undead on the negative energy plane, is the negative energy plane more likely to spontaneously have more undead in it?

The Libris Mortis explanation is not really answering the question. It's providing a vague suggestion for how the DM might answer it, maybe, if he feels like it, and wants to develop the concept more.

[Lacco]

Necromancy as a whole has never been evil. Certain subsets of the necromancy school of magic are inherently evil.
Red Fel.
Now this is an interesting information for me - but since my knowledge of 3.5 is limited to few games, can't blame myself.
...also, this thread misses something. Discussion of evil without Red Fel?
So - are there "positive" necromantic spells?
Red Fel.

[Psyren]

I could make a comparison, but I would be stepping into real-world politics.

Just as well since I have no idea what that could be anyway.



Suffice it to say, with its vaguess, I don't know that Libris Mortis is asserting that undead will spontaneously arise as you describe here, either. What's the range? 1 foot per HD? 1 mile around each individual undead? continental? Worldwide? Planar? Multiversal? If I put undead on the negative energy plane, is the negative energy plane more likely to spontaneously have more undead in it?

It says "even the weakest undead on the material plane" so there's your answer.



The Libris Mortis explanation is not really answering the question. It's providing a vague suggestion for how the DM might answer it, maybe, if he feels like it, and wants to develop the concept more.

It answers the "what" just fine. I can understand wanting more info around the "how much" but then we're just haggling over price. Certainly I think making a vampire is more evil than making a skeleton, but I don't have to compare it to kicking a puppy to know that a paladin would be unhappy with all three.

[FaerieGodfather]

One faction in the eternal argument on the morality of Animate Dead argues that nothing in the rules (at least for 3.x) gives a clear consequentialist reason why undead are fundamentally any different from robots or Unseen Servants. The other faction notes precisely those "necromancy has a long history of being shown as dark magic" as well as plenty of points showing developer intent, and is trying to show what exactly makes it evil.

I think this is a major part of the problem, actually-- the D&D alignment system has never been based on consequentialist ethics. People cling to the alignment system insistently as a part of D&D tradition, but reject the cosmological premises that the alignment system is based on.

According to the logic that D&D alignment is based on, Good and Evil aren't value judgements. They are neither objective measures of the far-flung consequences of one's actions, nor deontological obedience to the dictums of Good and Evil deities. They are objective spiritual forces. And spells with the [Evil] subtype are not Evil because they have bad consequences or break the rules, they're Evil because they are powered by the literal forces of evil.

Hell, if you want a perfect example... think of the difference between programmed amnesia and mind rape. They're the same spell with the same effect, except the [Evil] one is easier to cast.

[Segev]

Just as well since I have no idea what that could be anyway.If you really want me to go into it, I can PM you, but if not, no biggie. It's a very clear analogy to me, but is most definitely a political hotbutton.


It says "even the weakest undead on the material plane" so there's your answer. I'll have to hunt it down myself for the full context and quote, because that fragment only tells me there's a range of "the material plane" but not what "even the weakest undead" is doing wrt it. I'll have access to it later tonight if I remember.


It answers the "what" just fine. I can understand wanting more info around the "how much" but then we're just haggling over price. Certainly I think making a vampire is more evil than making a skeleton, but I don't have to compare it to kicking a puppy to know that a paladin would be unhappy with all three.
"Haggling over price" is pretty significant when you're trying to assert that the "evil" being done is some contribution to a vague miasmic influence that eventually creates a tangible effect.

Let's say that it takes 1 guardsman to protect a society from horrific undead attacks per skeleton or zombie that spontaneously arises every day. That's a guardsman whose sole job, perhaps, is hunting down and killing 1 spontaneously generated skeleton or zombie that is actively seeking to do evil every day.

Clearly, 1 farmhand can produce more food than he, himself, will eat. Otherwise, literally every man, woman, and child would have to be a farmer to provide their own food. So a single skeleton of zombie farmhand - who won't eat a thing - can produce AT LEAST one person-worth of food.

If you thus hire one guard for each skeleton or zombie you animate and put to work on a farm, you would need at least 1 extra spontaneously animated skeleton or zombie per day per animated skeleton or zombie to equal the amount of good being done by having animated the farmhands.

Now, this is utilitarianist morality, but there's not really a better way to measure something that is so vague as "some amount of potential for a potential source of evil to arise."

This is the trouble with defining "well, it's evil because it vaguely increases a chance that something bad will happen." You can't tie any given act of it to a given evil happening. But you CAN tie specific good to the deeds done by the necromancer with his minions. So it's an inherently utilitarian argument for it being an evil spell, since there's no way to directly tie it to particular evil results. Well, that, or a fiat-morality argument. But fiat-morality undermines the definitions entirely, warping them to something unrecognizable from conversational uses of the terms.

I don't think I'm phrasing this well. Let's put it this way: if you can't say, "Because Necromancer Ned animated that skeleton, Billy was killed by a spontaneously animated skeleton when he wouldn't have been, otherwise," it's very very hard to make a meaningful claim that the animation of that skeleton by Ned was actually an evil act.

If it's just, "By doing this, you're risking that something connected tenuously to this will have a higher chance of happening and hurting somebody," then you could argue that construction projects - particularly in big cities - are inherently evil acts, as well: no matter what safety precautions you take, there's always a chance that something will go wrong - a hammer falling from a high-rise, a winch breaking and sending a pane of glass to the ground, a gawking tourist walking into oncoming traffic, a small child managing to slip past the cordon and getting into hazard areas without proper safety gear - and that chance raises the possibility of something bad happening to somebody innocent. "But it's not actively SEEKING to hurt them!" you might say; no, but that just means the probability of somebody getting hurt shifts a little.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Red Fel.
Now this is an interesting information for me - but since my knowledge of 3.5 is limited to few games, can't blame myself.
...also, this thread misses something. Discussion of evil without Red Fel?
So - are there "positive" necromantic spells?
Red Fel.

There's plenty of benign necromancy spells. Necromancy just has to do with manipulating negative energy. Death Ward, for example.

And I really do think where a lot of people seem to be going wrong in this discussion, and in a lot of other ones for that matter, is that they just can't wrap their heads around the idea that D&D alignment is not consequentialist based. If you cast an evil spell to literally save the entire world then you've still done an evil thing. It just may have been an evil thing that was worth doing, for the greater (smaller case g) good. It's entirely possible to posit a situation in which animating the dead for a good cause is worth it, but it's still evil. I certainly don't agree with D&D style alignment, but that's not an issue for me. Part of the fun of the game, for me, is playing in a world in which weird premises are true and what those premises being true entails.

[Gallowglass]

The sad truth (or perhaps happy truth) is that every edition of D&D/P have been notoriously (and apparently for some, frustratingly) vague on the whole Evil/Good thing.

I personally always felt that was a strength, allowing each DM to define the specifics game by game, world by world, rather than forcing encapsulation on it at the macro game level.

But, inevitably, thanks to scope creep and source book bloat, eventually some developer would come along and make something like BoVD/BoED to try and do exactly that. encapsulate and codify it.

For some, that's a good thing because they like getting the new codification. They like having known walls to go up against. There's nothing wrong with that.

My personal headcannon for 3.5/P has always been that "evil" and "Evil" are two different things. "evil" just means sentient/sapient beings committing atrocious acts against others for selfish reasons. "Evil" means tinged by/interacting with energy from the Negative Energy Plane.

Somewhere along the way, people figured out there was a strong correlation between "evil" and "Evil" and "good" and "Good" and started to conflate the two. This is why a devil, even one who is fighting the good fight and Drizzt Du'urdening it up and acting contrary to his nature would still ping as "Evil" in detect Evil. He's still "Evil" even if he's not "evil."

You end up with Paladins who come equipped with a "detect Negative Energy" sensor and have been trained through generations to think that its a good way to find the serial killers. When really its a strong indicator, but not the authoritative truth of that matter. You know. Midichlorians.

Raising undead is inherently "Evil". You are loosing negative energy into the Prime Material Plane, loosening the barriers between reality and a terribly place of energy that seeks to drink all life away. Negative Energy is "hunger" and Positive energy is "Nurture." Which just means that the PMP offers energy up and the NEP takes energy away. Two diodes on either end of the magnetic flow of energy.

For me, this has always helped smooth out the rough spots in the mythos. But I'm not pretending that its some universal truth or even supported by all the written word. Its just my own personal take on the matter.

But it might not be "evil". Like i said before, maybe you are only raising the skeletons of people who offered themselves to you before death and only so they can run a carnival for orphans. That's not evil.

But its still "Evil."

[Talakeal]

I think this is a major part of the problem, actually-- the D&D alignment system has never been based on consequentialist ethics. People cling to the alignment system insistently as a part of D&D tradition, but reject the cosmological premises that the alignment system is based on.

According to the logic that D&D alignment is based on, Good and Evil aren't value judgements. They are neither objective measures of the far-flung consequences of one's actions, nor deontological obedience to the dictums of Good and Evil deities. They are objective spiritual forces. And spells with the [Evil] subtype are not Evil because they have bad consequences or break the rules, they're Evil because they are powered by the literal forces of evil.

Hell, if you want a perfect example... think of the difference between programmed amnesia and mind rape. They're the same spell with the same effect, except the [Evil] one is easier to cast.

That makes sense, except that most of the good and evil spells are powered by neutally aligned positive or negative energy. Also, why cant you cast good spells to counter casting evil spells if thy are merely opposing energies?

[Max_Killjoy]

There's plenty of benign necromancy spells. Necromancy just has to do with manipulating negative energy. Death Ward, for example.

And I really do think where a lot of people seem to be going wrong in this discussion, and in a lot of other ones for that matter, is that they just can't wrap their heads around the idea that D&D alignment is not consequentialist based. If you cast an evil spell to literally save the entire world then you've still done an evil thing. It just may have been an evil thing that was worth doing, for the greater (smaller case g) good. It's entirely possible to posit a situation in which animating the dead for a good cause is worth it, but it's still evil. I certainly don't agree with D&D style alignment, but that's not an issue for me. Part of the fun of the game, for me, is playing in a world in which weird premises are true and what those premises being true entails.


I have a lot more trouble with a system that asserts moral standing and uses moral terminology... but then goes on to claim that intent and result don't matter, just which list the action taken is, by fiat, listed on.



The sad truth (or perhaps happy truth) is that every edition of D&D/P have been notoriously (and apparently for some, frustratingly) vague on the whole Evil/Good thing.

I personally always felt that was a strength, allowing each DM to define the specifics game by game, world by world, rather than forcing encapsulation on it at the macro game level.

But, inevitably, thanks to scope creep and source book bloat, eventually some developer would come along and make something like BoVD/BoED to try and do exactly that. encapsulate and codify it.

For some, that's a good thing because they like getting the new codification. They like having known walls to go up against. There's nothing wrong with that.

My personal headcannon for 3.5/P has always been that "evil" and "Evil" are two different things. "evil" just means sentient/sapient beings committing atrocious acts against others for selfish reasons. "Evil" means tinged by/interacting with energy from the Negative Energy Plane.

Somewhere along the way, people figured out there was a strong correlation between "evil" and "Evil" and "good" and "Good" and started to conflate the two. This is why a devil, even one who is fighting the good fight and Drizzt Du'urdening it up and acting contrary to his nature would still ping as "Evil" in detect Evil. He's still "Evil" even if he's not "evil."

You end up with Paladins who come equipped with a "detect Negative Energy" sensor and have been trained through generations to think that its a good way to find the serial killers. When really its a strong indicator, but not the authoritative truth of that matter. You know. Midichlorians.

Raising undead is inherently "Evil". You are loosing negative energy into the Prime Material Plane, loosening the barriers between reality and a terribly place of energy that seeks to drink all life away. Negative Energy is "hunger" and Positive energy is "Nurture." Which just means that the PMP offers energy up and the NEP takes energy away. Two diodes on either end of the magnetic flow of energy.

For me, this has always helped smooth out the rough spots in the mythos. But I'm not pretending that its some universal truth or even supported by all the written word. Its just my own personal take on the matter.

But it might not be "evil". Like i said before, maybe you are only raising the skeletons of people who offered themselves to you before death and only so they can run a carnival for orphans. That's not evil.

But its still "Evil."

That's the version I've long said might as well be called "purple and green" morality, or whatever, pick your color. "Evil" and "Good" have little if anything to do with evil and good.

And yes, it makes about as much sense as "midichlorians".

[Psyren]

If you really want me to go into it, I can PM you, but if not, no biggie. It's a very clear analogy to me, but is most definitely a political hotbutton.

Forum rules apply in PMs too so best not.



I'll have to hunt it down myself for the full context and quote, because that fragment only tells me there's a range of "the material plane" but not what "even the weakest undead" is doing wrt it. I'll have access to it later tonight if I remember.

I mean sure, read the whole thing if you want, but it's clear that it's pointing out undead on the material plane. Undead on the NEP obviously aren't radiating anything beyond what's already there.



"Haggling over price" is pretty significant when you're trying to assert that the "evil" being done is some contribution to a vague miasmic influence that eventually creates a tangible effect.

Let's say that it takes 1 guardsman to protect a society from horrific undead attacks per skeleton or zombie that spontaneously arises every day. That's a guardsman whose sole job, perhaps, is hunting down and killing 1 spontaneously generated skeleton or zombie that is actively seeking to do evil every day.

I assume this guardsman has Knowledge Religion and Gather Information among other things necessary to find them? :smallamused:
So they're neither Warriors nor Fighters now either.

And you're also assuming that he's even in the right place to even encounter it before it kills an innocent. No, more likely you'd need a sufficient distribution of multiple guardsmen spread across numerous populate areas, enough to cover off on every single innocent sapient life that could come into contact with such monsters. And depending on the undead (e.g. Shadows), you also need to outfit said guardsmen with at least +1 weapons, or they're just fodder.

Or... and hear me out on this one... you could just discourage necromancy as a society. Gee, I wonder which one most D&D peoples went with.

[FaerieGodfather]

That makes sense, except that most of the good and evil spells are powered by neutally aligned positive or negative energy. Also, why cant you cast good spells to counter casting evil spells if thy are merely opposing energies?

Because the game's designers aren't any better at following the internal logic of the alignment system than its fans are, as far as I can tell, and because they themselves cannot stop conflating "supernatural forces of evil" with "consequentialist evil" with the absolute worst kind of "because I said so" Crazy Moon Logic.

I mean, is mind rape actually supposed to channel the spiritual energy of the Lower Planes to rewrite the victim's mind... or is it just [Evil] because there's no non-Evil way to use the spell? (Don't @ me on this, I am not trying to start that conversation again.) If it's the latter, why/how can programmed amnesia even exist? If the spiritually-neutral application of plant/animal derived toxins is morally evil because of the "suffering" they cause to victims (whether they cause pain or not), are ravages non-Evil because the "spiritual good" counterbalances the "moral evil"... or because ravages only hurt Evil characters? If it's the latter, why isn't using normal poison against Evil characters non-Evil? Does that mean that inflicting unnecessary suffering on Evil characters is non-Evil, in complete contradiction to everything else the alignment system has to say?

If "spiritual good" can outweigh the "moral evil" of an act... then, finally, why can the "moral good" of an act not counterbalance its "spiritual evil", as proponents of necroeconomics suggest?

It's because D&D's alignment system was not intended to be used for any kind of nuanced morality and isn't suited to the task, and rather than admitting this and removing/replacing it we just keep piling more and more hot garbage on top of it that makes it even less suitable for the task to which we are applying it.

[Lord Raziere]

It's because D&D's alignment system was not intended to be used for any kind of nuanced morality and isn't suited to the task, and rather than admitting this and removing/replacing it we just keep piling more and more hot garbage on top of it that makes it even less suitable for the task to which we are applying it.

Yeah, and the more I look at morality, the more I find nuanced morality is less of a unified system and more of a result of using logic and reason to figure out a moral solution that is best for a specific situation and no other situation else. I'd say a desire to do good and a healthy ability to assess the situation with a clear head and general awareness is more valuable than a bunch of dogmatic rules that may or may not account for the situation and probably don't produce a good result regardless.

BoED in particular I'm pretty sure is only good for modeling Silver Age comic book morality. good if you want your god-wizard to have an authentic pre-modern superman experience, not so good for anyone else.

[Max_Killjoy]

Because the game's designers aren't any better at following the internal logic of the alignment system than its fans are, as far as I can tell, and because they themselves cannot stop conflating "supernatural forces of evil" with "consequentialist evil" with the absolute worst kind of "because I said so" Crazy Moon Logic.

I mean, is mind rape actually supposed to channel the spiritual energy of the Lower Planes to rewrite the victim's mind... or is it just [Evil] because there's no non-Evil way to use the spell? (Don't @ me on this, I am not trying to start that conversation again.) If it's the latter, why/how can programmed amnesia even exist? If the spiritually-neutral application of plant/animal derived toxins is morally evil because of the "suffering" they cause to victims (whether they cause pain or not), are ravages non-Evil because the "spiritual good" counterbalances the "moral evil"... or because ravages only hurt Evil characters? If it's the latter, why isn't using normal poison against Evil characters non-Evil? Does that mean that inflicting unnecessary suffering on Evil characters is non-Evil, in complete contradiction to everything else the alignment system has to say?

If "spiritual good" can outweigh the "moral evil" of an act... then, finally, why can the "moral good" of an act not counterbalance its "spiritual evil", as proponents of necroeconomics suggest?

It's because D&D's alignment system was not intended to be used for any kind of nuanced morality and isn't suited to the task, and rather than admitting this and removing/replacing it we just keep piling more and more hot garbage on top of it that makes it even less suitable for the task to which we are applying it.


Insert vigorous clapping gif here.

I have literally never seen a single good thing come from D&D-like Alignment in any campaign or session ever.

[Enixon]

So he gets to be as evil as he wants, and so long as he doesn't get "booted" by his deity, he "pings" as "Good"?


I don't know if it's relevant or not, but I rember near the end of 3.5's run Wizards had a "weird monster poll" where the winner got put into a free module. The winner of the poll ended up being a Succubus Paladin, it was noted in the module that she pinged as all four alignments, Chaos and Evil becasue as a demon she had the [Chaos] and [Evil] subtypes, her body is basically made of the stuff, Law and Good becasue Lawful Good was her actual alignment.

So there was at least some precedence for creatures pinging as "both" when there's a alignment conflict.

[Dragonexx]

Sometimes I wonder if the D&D alignment system isn't actually aggressively stupid on purpose, and that every single instance of hypocrisy and sheer bloody-minded viciousness (from "Good") is actually absolutely intentional. The only thing that keeps me from going all-in on this (admittedly mean-spriited) fan theory is that I simply cannot fathom any sensible motive why the designers of D&D would keep making these rules even more arbritrary and capricious over time.

A bit late of a reply, but the answer to your question is that D&D is a franchise. It's had content written by hundreds if not thousands of writers over a period approaching half a century. Those people all come from different backgrounds and have different outlooks on the world. There's no way your going to get a coherent moral philosophy out of that.

[Max_Killjoy]

I don't know if it's relevant or not, but I rember near the end of 3.5's run Wizards had a "weird monster poll" where the winner got put into a free module. The winner of the poll ended up being a Succubus Paladin, it was noted in the module that she pinged as all four alignments, Chaos and Evil becasue as a demon she had the [Chaos] and [Evil] subtypes, her body is basically made of the stuff, Law and Good becasue Lawful Good was her actual alignment.

So there was at least some precedence for creatures pinging as "both" when there's a alignment conflict.


To me, that just illustrates how silly the idea of morality as cosmic energies can quickly get if you stop to examine it critically, or look behind the "orcs are evil so we can kill them freely" team jersey stuff.

[hamishspence]

That's why I like authors (including The Giant, and the writers of BoED) who say "No, you can't kill orcs freely".

[Red Fel]

Red Fel.
Now this is an interesting information for me - but since my knowledge of 3.5 is limited to few games, can't blame myself.
...also, this thread misses something. Discussion of evil without Red Fel?
So - are there "positive" necromantic spells?
Red Fel.

Hey, I'm here. Okay, let's see.

... Necromancy spells that aren't exactly "Evil?" Check.

... The fact that Good is totally good with mind control and personality re-writing, as long as it doesn't have the [Evil] tag? Covered it.

... The indisputable truth that the writers played fast and loose with moral terminology in constructing what is easily described as an arbitrary system, lacking nuance or consistency, and reflecting little more than the length of the DM's left foot? Yup, got that one, too.

I mean, I'm glad to be included, but... I don't think there's anything for me to add. You've all got it pretty much under control.

You've finally internalized my lessons. I'm so proud.

[NNescio]

Red Fel!

RED FEL!

RED FEL!

[Talakeal]

But that's the whole point, D&D doesn't care if it's "for the greater good." The act is still evil. It might very well be necessary anyway, in which case you (if you're running a class that cares about acts in that way) would be able to get an atonement afterward.

1) As above, you're only condemned in that way if you don't atone. Which you should, if you want to maximize your chances of those actions not impacting your record.

2) Most settings do have a metaphysical judge that can do this sort of weighing of actions after you die - Kelemvor, Pharasma, Wee Jas etc. Even OotS has one. Doesn't stop that specific action from being evil, but your overall record is what ultimately matters to your afterlife destination. So I don't see the fixation on wanting your every single act to be considered good. If you have to animate some skeletons to save the world (or even a save a village) then do it, and consider getting forgiveness afterward - or at the very least, stopping once the immediate danger is over.


That is pretty reasonable actually.

I still don't like the fact that it is fundamentally mixing two different moral systems (it is evil to channel [evil] energy, but it isn't good to channel [good] energy, but you can still cleanse [evil] energy with a different spell, it just requires XP and sincere contrition), but overall that is is a good enough explanation.

[Psyren]

... The fact that Good is totally good with mind control and personality re-writing, as long as it doesn't have the [Evil] tag? Covered it.

1) For mind control, I don't know that I would equate "tremendous ethical responsibility" with "totally good with it." Sounds like an acknowledgement of the vast inherent dangers/fall-potential to me.

2) For personality rewriting - I agree, Sanctify the Wicked is dumb. Redemption through any means other than roleplay + atonement is dumb as far as I'm concerned.


That is pretty reasonable actually.

I still don't like the fact that it is fundamentally mixing two different moral systems (it is evil to channel [evil] energy, but it isn't good to channel [good] energy, but you can still cleanse [evil] energy with a different spell, it just requires XP and sincere contrition), but overall that is is a good enough explanation.

I do appreciate that, it's not easy to find common ground in alignment threads :smallsmile:

As far as the imbalance you mentioned (evil spells in a vacuum making you more evil, but good spells in a vacuum not redeeming) - honestly I'm okay with the scales being tipped in that way. The D&D world isn't fair, and evil is generally winning - that's exactly why heroes are needed in the first place, at all levels.

Consider for example the Blood War - that if evil hadn't stopped to fight evil, we'd have already lost.

[Segev]

If you cast an evil spell to literally save the entire world then you've still done an evil thing. It just may have been an evil thing that was worth doing, for the greater (smaller case g) good. It's entirely possible to posit a situation in which animating the dead for a good cause is worth it, but it's still evil. I certainly don't agree with D&D style alignment, but that's not an issue for me. Part of the fun of the game, for me, is playing in a world in which weird premises are true and what those premises being true entails.And here's where I have an issue with trying to cop out of your "evil" spell being "evil" by claiming that it raises the chances, somewhere, that a bad thing will happen to somebody.

"Do an evil thing to save the world" is something along the lines of "summon a child from another world and sacrifice it to Azathoth so that Azathoth will spare every living thing born in your own world." It's unquestionably evil, because you're not even able to say, "Well, the sacrifice would've died when Azathoth destroyed the world, anyway." It's unquestionably evil, because you're sacrificing an innocent who in no way volunteered that you kidnapped and forced into it. But there's certainly room for "greater good" arguments that aren't even strained, even if a Paladin would fall for not finding a better solution than that if he committed the act.

"Shift the 'does he die today?' roll on a d100 from 'he dies on a 34 or less' to 'he dies on a 35 or less' on some random shmuck in your home plane in order to ensure the survival of an entire city? I mean, okay, if the shmuck rolls a 35 and you know it, you might feel badly about it.

But you aren't even shifting probabilities by that much with a single animation, unless animating the dead causes a geometric proliferation. (Remember, we're not talking about spawn-creating undead, here.)

To summarize: the Libris Mortis explanation, even if entirely true, creates so much indirection between the use of the spell and the negative consequences that calling it "evil" to cast it is still laughable. It would actually be more direct to claim that earthquake is a [fire] spell because sometimes earthquakes knock over candles and start fires!

This isn't me saying, "Animate dead shouldn't be [evil]." This is me saying that the actual act of casting the spell needs to do some malicious harm in a direct fashion. It can be minor malicious harm, to reflect that you aren't turning evil for casting it just once, but it has to be at least on the level of popping a toddler's balloon animal.


I mean sure, read the whole thing if you want, but it's clear that it's pointing out undead on the material plane. Undead on the NEP obviously aren't radiating anything beyond what's already there.Ah, okay, that's what you were driving at. I wasn't entirely sure.


I assume this guardsman has Knowledge Religion and Gather Information among other things necessary to find them? :smallamused:
So they're neither Warriors nor Fighters now either.Nonsense. Specially-trained warriors can totally have 2 sp devoted to 1 rank of K:Religion. :smalltongue:


And you're also assuming that he's even in the right place to even encounter it before it kills an innocent. No, more likely you'd need a sufficient distribution of multiple guardsmen spread across numerous populate areas, enough to cover off on every single innocent sapient life that could come into contact with such monsters. And depending on the undead (e.g. Shadows), you also need to outfit said guardsmen with at least +1 weapons, or they're just fodder.Eh, valid points, but if you do it right, the farmhands can be replaced by warriors. The need for magic weapons is noted as an issue, but the rarity of something that needs those will be even higher.


Or... and hear me out on this one... you could just discourage necromancy as a society. Gee, I wonder which one most D&D peoples went with.
There's a difference between "society discourages this practice for public safety" (a Lawful consideration) and "doing this is actively evil." If anything, the argument you're making with this last quote is that it should be a [chaotic] spell. Not an [evil] one.


But this is still somewhat arguing a tangent to my point. The net benefit of such a practice would be higher than the net harm, unless the conversion rate of animate dead to spontaneously animating dead is really, really high.

"Operating this hospital will cause one randomly-selected person to have a chance equivalent to winning the grand prize of the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes of having a natural disaster befall them, with a different random person selected each day." Is the hospital evil to run? What if we remove the direct "one randomly-selected person will have this as a direct result," and instead assert that there exists a probability that natural disasters will happen, and running the hospital is the equivalent of buying one lottery ticket every 2 weeks for the whole planet wherein winning the grand prize is +1 natural disaster that year.

In other words, a general, immeasurably small increase in worldwide risk of "something bad" happening does not make an act evil. It can't, because the law of unintended consequences makes just about anything "evil" at that point.

It's no better than not giving an explanation and simply saying "because the gods say so," and generally asserting that good and evil are meaningless except as team names.

[hamishspence]

As far as the imbalance you mentioned (evil spells in a vacuum making you more evil, but good spells in a vacuum not redeeming) - honestly I'm okay with the scales being tipped in that way. The D&D world isn't fair, and evil is generally winning - that's exactly why heroes are needed in the first place, at all levels.




I still don't like the fact that it is fundamentally mixing two different moral systems (it is evil to channel [evil] energy, but it isn't good to channel [good] energy

"casting Good spells has no redemptive influence on the caster" isn't quite the same as "casting good spells isn't a good act".

I tend to the view that if you're a character "banned from committing Good acts, on pain of Falling" (variant Evil paladin, Unearthed Arcana) and you take levels in wizard, and cast a Good wizard spell, you will Fall and need to atone.

[Psyren]

There's a difference between "society discourages this practice for public safety" (a Lawful consideration) and "doing this is actively evil." If anything, the argument you're making with this last quote is that it should be a [chaotic] spell. Not an [evil] one.

Disagree - I would argue that public safety is necessary to protect innocents, making it both a moral and ethical concern. You can't realistically disregard the safety of innocents and claim that actions that negatively impact them have no moral dimension, you just can't.



But this is still somewhat arguing a tangent to my point. The net benefit of such a practice would be higher than the net harm, unless the conversion rate of animate dead to spontaneously animating dead is really, really high.

But you missed my point. Your proposed practice would have to operate perfectly in order to be sure you prevented any innocent lives from being lost, all to not impugn the the craft of a necromancer. To say nothing of how many more you'd get if they didn't feel they had to hide or face censure, which would require even more resources from you.

I mean, reread what you wrote, you're proposing that every single farmer take up fighting on the side just so they can deal with extra undead if there are no guards nearby. Never mind their age, statistics, or even desire to do that. They'd tell any necromancer they saw to get bent, and report them to the authorities promptly - just like they do now.



"Operating this hospital will cause one randomly-selected person to have a chance equivalent to winning the grand prize of the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes of having a natural disaster befall them, with a different random person selected each day." Is the hospital evil to run? What if we remove the direct "one randomly-selected person will have this as a direct result," and instead assert that there exists a probability that natural disasters will happen, and running the hospital is the equivalent of buying one lottery ticket every 2 weeks for the whole planet wherein winning the grand prize is +1 natural disaster that year.

In other words, a general, immeasurably small increase in worldwide risk of "something bad" happening does not make an act evil. It can't, because the law of unintended consequences makes just about anything "evil" at that point.

It's no better than not giving an explanation and simply saying "because the gods say so," and generally asserting that good and evil are meaningless except as team names.

You say those ("it thins the veil that keeps more horrors out" and "because the gods say so") as if they're different things when they are actually one and the same. How much does it increase worldwide evil? Enough so that deities like Pelor, Kelemvor and Sarenrae - hell, even neutral ones like Wee Jas and Pharasma - take notice. Mortals may not be able to quantify how much that is and determine whether a system like yours would be worth it, but the gods certainly can, and their answer has been "destroy undead wherever you spot them." Figuring out the math that would justify such a judgment might be a fun thought exercise, but it doesn't change that mandate one iota.

[Segev]

Disagree - I would argue that public safety is necessary to protect innocents, making it both a moral and ethical concern. You can't realistically disregard the safety of innocents and claim that actions that negatively impact them have no moral dimension, you just can't.But the METHODS CHOSEN to keep public safety will vary. Some societies WILL value undead labor and find that the increased cultural taboos and precautions are worth it, and generally not feel themselves any less safe...if the risk increase is actually lower.


But you missed my point. Your proposed practice would have to operate perfectly in order to be sure you prevented any innocent lives from being lost, all to not impugn the the craft of a necromancer. To say nothing of how many more you'd get if they didn't feel they had to hide or face censure, which would require even more resources from you. Now you're missing the other half of my point: Anything you do - literally anything - could theoretically lead to innocent lives being lost, somehow, at a sufficient level of indirection. That level of indirection is shot well past by the Libris Mortis explanation.


I mean, reread what you wrote, you're proposing that every single farmer take up fighting on the side just so they can deal with extra undead if there are no guards nearby. Never mind their age, statistics, or even desire to do that. They'd tell any necromancer they saw to get bent, and report them to the authorities promptly - just like they do now.Your mistake here is assuming that the social structure would still be subsistance peasant farmers, but now as armed guards while their undead man the fields. This also ignores the probability of setting one's own undead farmhands on the hostile undead while one goes to get the local necromancer to deal with them. But moreover, it would be very likely that this level of increased productivity on farms would result in urbanization and concentration of the living in towns and cities as they don't need unskilled labor on the farms. Much as happens with modernization and industrialization.

Though this is veering WAY off topic, now. My point wasn't that this specific model was great, but that it's an example of how the "yeah, we're going from 100 random undead across the whole plane spawned each year to 101, because you animated another 1000 skeletons, and that extra 1 undead might kill an innocent who wouldn't have died to one of the other 100," is just...inadequate...as an excuse for why casting the spell is inherently evil.


You say those ("it thins the veil that keeps more horrors out" and "because the gods say so") as if they're different things when they are actually one and the same. How much does it increase worldwide evil? Enough so that deities like Pelor, Kelemvor and Sarenrae - hell, even neutral ones like Wee Jas and Pharasma - take notice. Mortals may not be able to quantify how much that is and determine whether a system like yours would be worth it, but the gods certainly can, and their answer has been "destroy undead wherever you spot them." Figuring out the math that would justify such a judgment might be a fun thought exercise, but it doesn't change that mandate one iota.

When "It thins the veil, and that's bad, so we're telling you it's evil" is juxtaposed with "building cities increases the risk of disease spreading through your population, so we're telling you it's evil--oh, wait, no we're not," the only difference is that the gods are saying one thing is evil but not the other. The justification for one being evil applies to the other, and yet, the gods don't give the same prohibition.

This makes it NOT "Don't do this because of good reasons," but rather, "Don't do this because we say so."

"Because of good reasons" has to be consistently applied, or it's an excuse, not a real reason.

"I, the lord Pelor, prohibit you from wearing white after labor day," doesn't make wearing white after labor day "evil" unless "evil" is just a team name. Not unless there's actually some objective evil beyond "Pelor said it was bad" to explain why Pelor gave that prohibition.

I'm not disputing that animate dead is an [evil] spell, nor claiming it "shouldn't" be. I'm saying that this needs to mean that, every time you cast it, you're doing something mean, malicious, or harmful in a very direct way. Not in a "well, maybe it counts as carelessness or negligence and vaguely causes problems that can't be directly tracked back to it" sort of way.

Heck, I'm not even disputing that Libris Mortis's rule should exist. Sure, have a setting-wide thing that says that more undead means more spontaneous undead are likely to happen! I'm fine with that. I'm just saying that it's not adequate to explain animate dead being an [evil] spell.

[Psyren]

Quotes slightly out of order.



Your mistake here is assuming that the social structure would still be subsistance peasant farmers, but now as armed guards while their undead man the fields. This also ignores the probability of setting one's own undead farmhands on the hostile undead while one goes to get the local necromancer to deal with them. But moreover, it would be very likely that this level of increased productivity on farms would result in urbanization and concentration of the living in towns and cities as they don't need unskilled labor on the farms. Much as happens with modernization and industrialization.




Though this is veering WAY off topic, now. My point wasn't that this specific model was great, but that it's an example of how the "yeah, we're going from 100 random undead across the whole plane spawned each year to 101, because you animated another 1000 skeletons, and that extra 1 undead might kill an innocent who wouldn't have died to one of the other 100," is just...inadequate...as an excuse for why casting the spell is inherently evil.

Okay - so now you're not talking about a single necromancer using reanimation for adventuring purposes, but instead enough undead labor to support an entire economy. That is an order of magnitude more metaphysical pollution than the first scenario; all you would do is accelerate the negative side-effects even further. And your defense strategy is even worse - now you need enough undead both to work the fields and to fight off anything that appears before innocent life is lost to this scheme, which in turn means even more stuff coming through, which in turn means more needed for defense, which...

And putting aside that I don't buy your numbers at all, you're making quite the assumption that the 101st thing to slip through is just another skeleton or zombie that your mindless undead laborers can easily handle. We know that the variety of undead that can be spontaneously found out in the world are much, much broader (and more dangerous than that.) Some can even control your undead. What if it's a Death Knight? An Undead Lord? An Atropal Scion? Your laborers certainly wouldn't care (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0830.html); they have no loyalty to your grand vision of a post labor society and will happily chow down on the brains of their former coworkers if commanded, or even if left alone in some cases.


But the METHODS CHOSEN to keep public safety will vary. Some societies WILL value undead labor and find that the increased cultural taboos and precautions are worth it, and generally not feel themselves any less safe...if the risk increase is actually lower.

The effects are plane-wide; no society has the authority to make that decision/calculation for everyone else. That's why the anti-undead deities impart a similarly wide jurisdiction for their followers to eradicate undead wherever they can, even the ones that aren't actively attacking people. If a town wants to automate manual labor that badly, it should be investing in constructs, not undead.



Now you're missing the other half of my point: Anything you do - literally anything - could theoretically lead to innocent lives being lost, somehow, at a sufficient level of indirection. That level of indirection is shot well past by the Libris Mortis explanation.
...
When "It thins the veil, and that's bad, so we're telling you it's evil" is juxtaposed with "building cities increases the risk of disease spreading through your population, so we're telling you it's evil--oh, wait, no we're not," the only difference is that the gods are saying one thing is evil but not the other. The justification for one being evil applies to the other, and yet, the gods don't give the same prohibition.

If you don't see the difference between building a city, and pouring toxic waste into a field/river + not caring where it ultimately ends up, I'm not exactly sure what else to tell you. We may have to agree to disagree.



I'm not disputing that animate dead is an [evil] spell, nor claiming it "shouldn't" be. I'm saying that this needs to mean that, every time you cast it, you're doing something mean, malicious, or harmful in a very direct way. Not in a "well, maybe it counts as carelessness or negligence and vaguely causes problems that can't be directly tracked back to it" sort of way.

Heck, I'm not even disputing that Libris Mortis's rule should exist. Sure, have a setting-wide thing that says that more undead means more spontaneous undead are likely to happen! I'm fine with that. I'm just saying that it's not adequate to explain animate dead being an [evil] spell.

Whereas I don't think it has to be direct at all; games abstract lots of things, and this is just one more of them. Certainly it would be a fascinating field of study in-universe, and if that's the character you'd want to run in a campaign I would support it. Just don't expect most paladins to be bosom buddies with you.

[Max_Killjoy]

If you don't see the difference between building a city, and pouring toxic waste into a field/river + not caring where it ultimately ends up, I'm not exactly sure what else to tell you. We may have to agree to disagree.


For much of human history, there wasn't a difference between the building a city, and dumping a bunch of dangerous waste without much concern for where it ended up once it was outside the city. Or even inside it.

[jjordan]

Wouldn't it be detrimental to the system, overall, for the designers to be more specific about alignment? I mean, it's a very general abstraction and it's good for that. But adding specific details to core rule-books would sort of lock in a single interpretation and get in the way of individual DMs and setting construction. You've all made it very clear that you've got different viewpoints on what constitute good and evil and what behaviors you expect and how you determine what is good and what is evil and it's been very interesting to read. But the desire for a single, canon, answer seems... foolhardy. And if there was one I'd reject it in a heartbeat and go with home rules.

[Talakeal]

Wouldn't it be detrimental to the system, overall, for the designers to be more specific about alignment? I mean, it's a very general abstraction and it's good for that. But adding specific details to core rule-books would sort of lock in a single interpretation and get in the way of individual DMs and setting construction. You've all made it very clear that you've got different viewpoints on what constitute good and evil and what behaviors you expect and how you determine what is good and what is evil and it's been very interesting to read. But the desire for a single, canon, answer seems... foolhardy. And if there was one I'd reject it in a heartbeat and go with home rules.

Yes, which is why I favor the "core only" approach to alignment.

The PHB and DMG present a fairly straightforward and simple set of guidelines for alignment, and it works pretty well as long as the players and the DM don't have drastically opposed world views.

Later splats tried to codify everything, and the result was the contradictory cosmic-horror-lite setting that late 3.5 turned into.

[Psyren]

For much of human history, there wasn't a difference between the building a city, and dumping a bunch of dangerous waste without much concern for where it ended up once it was outside the city. Or even inside it.

Precisely, we didn't know any better. You can't really make the same argument about necromancy, when every Good and even some of the Neutral religions are all constantly yelling "Don't!" while all the evil religions, fiends and death-cults are yelling "Woo, go for it!"

[redwizard007]

Not to add yet another tangent to an already long discussion, but I have seen a few mentions of undead being used for labor. Has anyone ever taken the time to sketch out what that would look like, or the investment it would entail, what jobs they would do, that kind of stuff?

[Gallowglass]

For much of human history, there wasn't a difference between the building a city, and dumping a bunch of dangerous waste without much concern for where it ended up once it was outside the city. Or even inside it.

Oh poppycock. That's an overly pessimistic hyperbolic take on it with no meaningful connection to context.

What is building a city? Building a city is improving and enhancing building a town or hamlet or village. Its about grouping a large number of related and unrelated individuals together for mutual security and helping each other to allow for greater specialization. Because advancement and improvement on a macro level can only ever happen with increased specialization.

You will never have Galileo if you make him grow his own crops, bake his own bread, clean his own waste and sew his own clothes. So you have others in the city do those things so he's freed up to do the Galileo things.

A city has the by product of providing a better system for passing information on from generation to generation. A massive improvement on the classic apprentice model. Suddenly, with a city, you have universities, libraries, and other systems of knowledge storage and transfer.

Does it have unwanted byproducts? Of course it does. You can't have thousands of people in a small space without figuring out where the waste product goes. And that waste product multiples as the city grows. And the city encourages faster growth.

But to sit there and say "For much of human history, there wasn't a difference between the building a city, and dumping a bunch of dangerous waste without much concern for where it ended up once it was outside the city. Or even inside it." is just a pessimistic, cynical viewpoint that's beyond any reasonable context.

[Psyren]

Not to add yet another tangent to an already long discussion, but I have seen a few mentions of undead being used for labor. Has anyone ever taken the time to sketch out what that would look like, or the investment it would entail, what jobs they would do, that kind of stuff?

The nation of Geb in Golarion does this actually, if you're looking for an officially fleshed-out model. They are also under constant distrust if not outright hostility from their living neighbors, but the mythic Ghost and Lich-Queen (not to mention the high-level necromancers) running the place make it a tough nut to crack. (The overall alignment of the place is LE.)

[redwizard007]

The nation of Geb in Golarion does this actually, if you're looking for an officially fleshed-out model. They are also under constant distrust if not outright hostility from their living neighbors, but the mythic Ghost and Lich-Queen (not to mention the high-level necromancers) running the place make it a tough nut to crack. (The overall alignment of the place is LE.)

Thanks. I'll have to check that out.

[Max_Killjoy]

Precisely, we didn't know any better. You can't really make the same argument about necromancy, when every Good and even some of the Neutral religions are all constantly yelling "Don't!" while all the evil religions, fiends and death-cults are yelling "Woo, go for it!"


Segev's point, I think, is:

The same gods who supposedly say "don't create undead, it increases the odds of more undead because of the taint"... must know that packing a bunch of people into the close confines of a city with no or bad sanitation increases the odds of disease outbreaks.

Yet in one case they say it's bad and use "the odds of innocents dying go up as an indirect result of this action" as the justification, and the other case they say nothing, even though the increase in deaths might even be more direct and bigger in the city example.

It comes across as the gods in these settings saying to themselves "we don't like undead, what excuse can we make up for why it's "bad"?"




Oh poppycock. That's an overly pessimistic hyperbolic take on it with no meaningful connection to context.

What is building a city? Building a city is improving and enhancing building a town or hamlet or village. Its about grouping a large number of related and unrelated individuals together for mutual security and helping each other to allow for greater specialization. Because advancement and improvement on a macro level can only ever happen with increased specialization.

You will never have Galileo if you make him grow his own crops, bake his own bread, clean his own waste and sew his own clothes. So you have others in the city do those things so he's freed up to do the Galileo things.

A city has the by product of providing a better system for passing information on from generation to generation. A massive improvement on the classic apprentice model. Suddenly, with a city, you have universities, libraries, and other systems of knowledge storage and transfer.

Does it have unwanted byproducts? Of course it does. You can't have thousands of people in a small space without figuring out where the waste product goes. And that waste product multiples as the city grows. And the city encourages faster growth.

But to sit there and say "For much of human history, there wasn't a difference between the building a city, and dumping a bunch of dangerous waste without much concern for where it ended up once it was outside the city. Or even inside it." is just a pessimistic, cynical viewpoint that's beyond any reasonable context.


You're reading way too much of an attack into a simple statement of the state of many cities across the span of human history. I mean, do some research on the history of urban sanitation, or lack thereof?

[Talakeal]

It comes across as the gods in these settings game designers saying to themselves "we don't like undead, what excuse can we make up for why it's "bad"?"

Fixed that for you.

[Max_Killjoy]

Fixed that for you.

Hrm... not a fan of that meme ("FTFY").

But... I think it's true at both levels. The gods in question are issuing the decrees of "morality" and often are depicted as hating the undead.

AND the designers/writers want the undead to be icky and evil and dangerous, because thems the tropes for those things in the fiction they want to "emulate".

[Psyren]

Segev's point, I think, is:

The same gods who supposedly say "don't create undead, it increases the odds of more undead because of the taint"... must know that packing a bunch of people into the close confines of a city with no or bad sanitation increases the odds of disease outbreaks.

Yet in one case they say it's bad and use "the odds of innocents dying go up as an indirect result of this action" as the justification, and the other case they say nothing, even though the increase in deaths might even be more direct and bigger in the city example.

It comes across as the gods in these settings saying to themselves "we don't like undead, what excuse can we make up for why it's "bad"?"

Gotcha, I understand - and here's a few key reasons why this analogy doesn't work either.

1) The nice thing about cities is that the solution and the problem are all in the same place - people. Specifically, if there is a disease outbreak in a city, there's a pretty good chance that an adept, a cleric, or even a whole church powerful enough to handle the problem are nearby and can contain it. (To say nothing of secular solutions like Heal checks and alchemy.) There are whole faiths in most if not all D&D settings based around fighting and controlling disease, and in this case, they don't even have to play the guessing game of which rural hamlet something nasty is going to pop up in.

2) Even if a disease were to get outside the city, it would still follow pretty predictable vectors; trade routes, waterways, bird migrations, that sort of thing. Living things that carry it still need to eat, drink, and sleep. You could find the source and the direction pretty quickly. Compare that to a threat whose range is "the whole plane." And anything that pops up actively seeks the living. Some of it can walk through walls, some of it can fly, some of it can bloody teleport, and none of it needs to stop and rest. And I haven't even gotten to the ones that can create spawn.

3) To be blunt, the vast majority of diseases don't hold a candle to even some of the weaker undead. You can beat a disease with no help at all just by succeeding a saving throw or two. Diseases take a looooong time to kill anyone too (except, like, Mummy Rot or something) rather than a couple of rounds in the case of an undead. Even if disease kills a bunch of people, you can burn the bodies, boil your water for a while, and move on with your life. And that's assuming a pretty weak undead - some of them are pretty nasty, far worse than any printed disease in terms of potential bodycount. Oh, and diseases are never intelligent, nor can they end up with class levels.

Compare all of that to undead - the average person can't build up any kind of resistance or immunity to them, can't defeat them with saving throws and skill checks, has no way of knowing where they'll pop up or how far they'll travel, and definitely has few ways to defend themselves. These monsters are not designed to be a fair fight for standard array commoners and experts with no combat gear.


Fixed that for you.


Hrm... not a fan of that meme ("FTFY").

But... I think it's true at both levels. The gods in question are issuing the decrees of "morality" and often are depicted as hating the undead.

AND the designers/writers want the undead to be icky and evil and dangerous, because thems the tropes for those things in the fiction they want to "emulate".

That's called "top-down design" and it's as valid a method as any other. Start with what you want the end state to be (necromancers shunned and furtive, undead okay to attack on sight) and work backwards from there to determine the rationale.

[Max_Killjoy]

Gotcha, I understand - and here's a few key reasons why this analogy doesn't work either.

1) The nice thing about cities is that the solution and the problem are all in the same place - people. Specifically, if there is a disease outbreak in a city, there's a pretty good chance that an adept, a cleric, or even a whole church powerful enough to handle the problem are nearby and can contain it. (To say nothing of secular solutions like Heal checks and alchemy.) There are whole faiths in most if not all D&D settings based around fighting and controlling disease, and in this case, they don't even have to play the guessing game of which rural hamlet something nasty is going to pop up in.

2) Even if a disease were to get outside the city, it would still follow pretty predictable vectors; trade routes, waterways, bird migrations, that sort of thing. Living things that carry it still need to eat, drink, and sleep. You could find the source and the direction pretty quickly. Compare that to a threat whose range is "the whole plane." And anything that pops up actively seeks the living. Some of it can walk through walls, some of it can fly, some of it can bloody teleport, and none of it needs to stop and rest. And I haven't even gotten to the ones that can create spawn.

3) To be blunt, the vast majority of diseases don't hold a candle to even some of the weaker undead. You can beat a disease with no help at all just by succeeding a saving throw or two. Diseases take a looooong time to kill anyone too (except, like, Mummy Rot or something) rather than a couple of rounds in the case of an undead. Even if disease kills a bunch of people, you can burn the bodies, boil your water for a while, and move on with your life. And that's assuming a pretty weak undead - some of them are pretty nasty, far worse than any printed disease in terms of potential bodycount.

Compare all of that to undead - the average person can't build up any kind of resistance or immunity to them, can't defeat them with saving throws and skill checks, has no way of knowing where they'll pop up or how far they'll travel, and definitely has few ways to defend themselves. These monsters are not designed to be a fair fight for standard array commoners and experts with no combat gear.


Maybe a setting with disease-curing magic is different, but my gut reaction is that you're REALLY underselling disease as a killer and source of horror across most of urban history.

In some ways the aesthetics and tropes of the undead come from the horror and mystery of disease before modern medicine etc.




That's called "top-down design" and it's as valid a method as any other. Start with what you want the end state to be (necromancers shunned and furtive, undead okay to attack on sight) and work backwards from there to determine the rationale.


This requires working back up to the top starting from the decided-on rationale to see what effects it has on the rest of the setting.

[Psyren]

Maybe a setting with disease-curing magic is different, but my gut reaction is that you're REALLY underselling disease as a killer and source of horror across most of urban history.

In some ways the aesthetics and tropes of the undead come from the horror and mystery of disease before modern medicine etc.

As I noted above, you don't even need magic to cure disease in D&D, it just makes it even less of a major issue. So of course it's different. But even if it wasn't, undead are still far worse. (In fact, undead themselves can spread and even arise from disease too.)



This requires working back up to the top starting from the decided-on rationale to see what effects it has on the rest of the setting.

The rationale and the results mesh more than well enough from where I'm sitting.

[Segev]

If you don't see the difference between building a city, and pouring toxic waste into a field/river + not caring where it ultimately ends up, I'm not exactly sure what else to tell you. We may have to agree to disagree.You're still getting hung up on discussing the social model, which, while interesting, was meant only to be an illustrative example. The details of what would be required to make a full fledged economy belongs in a worldbuilding thread.

Max_Killjoy captures my point pretty well, below, to the extent of why I find it an unconvincing argument and view it as a false reason that's really just "because we say so," and which I have issue with in any discussion of "good" and "evil," because those have meanings that aren't society-dependent.

If you're leaning into society-dependence, you're talking Law/Chaos.

The point I'm trying to drive home that you seem to be missing due to too close analysis of my analogy/example is that the act of animating one undead has to so increase the output of spontaneous undead as to be directly equatable to specific harms done.

The way it's currently framed, I could frame almost literally any act you wished to name as "evil" by the same logic.

Help save a child's life? That increases the chance that the child may grow up to be evil and kill an innodent. Bake a peanut-butter cookie? There might be a man allergic to it who could eat it, or something that it touched. Drive your kid to soccer practice? More cars on the road increases the chances of a fatal car crash. And, in fact, in all cases, if you take it beyond a single incident, you all but guarantee that the CHANCES that something like those consequences happen to SOMEBODY are going up each time you do it, because no system of safety is perfect.

I cannot see a logical way to say, "Casting animate dead a lot increases the odds that an evil spontaneous undead will kill somebody, therefore it is evil to cast," without saying the same of any other activity which, in doing a lot, you contribute to a chance that evil will befall somebody, however indirectly.


Whereas I don't think it has to be direct at all; games abstract lots of things, and this is just one more of them. Certainly it would be a fascinating field of study in-universe, and if that's the character you'd want to run in a campaign I would support it. Just don't expect most paladins to be bosom buddies with you.Abstraction is one thing. Fiat is another. Right now, this is more "excuse for fiat" than "abstraction," for the reasons outlined by Max_Killjoy below.


Segev's point, I think, is:

The same gods who supposedly say "don't create undead, it increases the odds of more undead because of the taint"... must know that packing a bunch of people into the close confines of a city with no or bad sanitation increases the odds of disease outbreaks.

Yet in one case they say it's bad and use "the odds of innocents dying go up as an indirect result of this action" as the justification, and the other case they say nothing, even though the increase in deaths might even be more direct and bigger in the city example.

It comes across as the gods in these settings saying to themselves "we don't like undead, what excuse can we make up for why it's "bad"?"
Precisely. The explanation is, essentially, "If you do X, risks that bad thing Y happens goes up with the increase in the performance of X." But this can be said of almost any activity X you care to name; there exists SOME bad thing Y that increases in probability of happening as performance of X increases.

Therefore, the above is an inadequate justification to say, "Performing activity X is evil." Not unless you carry it to the logical (and absurd) extreme of "doing almost anything is evil, so you shouldn't do anything if you don't want to be an evil monster."

Sadly, I know people who buy into that latter bit of philosophy, and they are absolutely miserable in their lives and do next to no good for anybody, least of all themselves.

Essentially, it turns nearly all acts into a trolley problem. Is it better to do X, knowing you increase the odds of Y, or not to do X, knowing you aren't doing good thing Z because you're not doing X?

[Max_Killjoy]

As I noted above, you don't even need magic to cure disease in D&D, it just makes it even less of a major issue. So of course it's different. But even if it wasn't, undead are still far worse. (In fact, undead themselves can spread and even arise from disease too.)


Maybe it's D&D selling disease short then.

Reference, the Black Death wiping out at least 1/3 of Europe's population in under 100 years.




The rationale and the results mesh more than well enough from where I'm sitting.


Eh... I think others in this thread have laid out a LOT of unresolved issues.

[Psyren]

Maybe it's D&D selling disease short then.

Reference, the Black Death wiping out at least 1/3 of Europe's population in under 100 years.

Comparing a mundane threat in a supernatural world to a supernatural threat in a supernatural world seems... shortsighted to me.


Eh... I think others in this thread have laid out a LOT of unresolved issues.

I'd be quite shocked if this issue got resolved in this or any thread. Not when we disagree fundamentally about how necromancy should even be treated.



The point I'm trying to drive home that you seem to be missing due to too close analysis of my analogy/example is that the act of animating one undead has to so increase the output of spontaneous undead as to be directly equatable to specific harms done.

No, I do understand your point, I just disagree. An individual evil act can be pretty minor and still be tagged as evil. Note that FC2 gives "casting an evil spell" the lowest possible rating on its corrupt acts scale, and that's the closest anything comes to quantifying how evil Animate Dead would be. BoVD runs the gamut, mentioning reanimation and evil spells in the same section as bullying and murder.



The way it's currently framed, I could frame almost literally any act you wished to name as "evil" by the same logic.

Help save a child's life? That increases the chance that the child may grow up to be evil and kill an innodent. Bake a peanut-butter cookie? There might be a man allergic to it who could eat it, or something that it touched. Drive your kid to soccer practice? More cars on the road increases the chances of a fatal car crash. And, in fact, in all cases, if you take it beyond a single incident, you all but guarantee that the CHANCES that something like those consequences happen to SOMEBODY are going up each time you do it, because no system of safety is perfect.
[/quote]

And yet, both of you have yet to provide a single example that matches the effect undead could have though. I've heard establishing cities, disease, and starting fires so far, and provided my reasoning for dismissing all of them. As for your new set of absurdist ones: neither children, cookies, nor cars exist only to actively seek out and devour innocent life, nor does making them have the potential side effect of creating something that actively seeks out and devours innocent life, and certainly none of them has a chance of allowing something dangerous (i.e. high CR or class levels) into our world. Undead are unique in that respect. We can continue dancing this dance all day but your analogies just won't work.



Abstraction is one thing. Fiat is another.

Fiat is "deciding that this is how it should work." Abstraction is "now that we've established this is how it works, there's no need to provide detailed math around it." I'm talking about the latter.



Precisely. The explanation is, essentially, "If you do X, risks that bad thing Y happens goes up with the increase in the performance of X." But this can be said of almost any activity X you care to name; there exists SOME bad thing Y that increases in probability of happening as performance of X increases.

Therefore, the above is an inadequate justification to say, "Performing activity X is evil." Not unless you carry it to the logical (and absurd) extreme of "doing almost anything is evil, so you shouldn't do anything if you don't want to be an evil monster."

Sadly, I know people who buy into that latter bit of philosophy, and they are absolutely miserable in their lives and do next to no good for anybody, least of all themselves.

Essentially, it turns nearly all acts into a trolley problem. Is it better to do X, knowing you increase the odds of Y, or not to do X, knowing you aren't doing good thing Z because you're not doing X?

We have a long and fruitful thread discussing why the trolley problem has nothing to do with alignment and everything to do with what a person's ethics would dictate that they do. I won't rehash it here other than to say - if you inhabited a D&D setting, and decided that you think the benefits to animating undead outweighed the potential risks, that is a perfectly valid decision for your character to make. Just as it's equally valid for the paladins who want you to stop to get all up in your grill over it.

[Segev]

Comparing a mundane threat in a supernatural world to a supernatural threat in a supernatural world seems... shortsighted to me.A threat is a threat. It doesn't matter to Suzy whether she dies to a wild wolf pack, a tornado slamming her repeatedly through the trees of a forrest, or a skeleton that just wants to rip her to pieces.


I'd be quite shocked if this issue got resolved in this or any thread. Not when we disagree fundamentally about how necromancy should even be treated.I don't know that we do. I haven't seen in Max's posts anything to indicate you do with him, either. Are you under the impression that either of us are arguing that animate dead should not be an [evil] spell? So far as I know, neither of us are.


No, I do understand your point, I just disagree. An individual evil act can be pretty minor and still be tagged as evil. Note that FC2 gives "casting an evil spell" the lowest possible rating on its corrupt acts scale, and that's the closest anything comes to quantifying how evil Animate Dead would be. BoVD runs the gamut, mentioning reanimation and evil spells in the same section as bullying and murder.You clearly don't; the standard by which this "individual act" is being termed "evil" can apply equally well to "driving a car" or "living in a city" or "baking peanut butter cookies."



And yet, both of you have yet to provide a single example that matches the effect undead could have though. I've heard establishing cities, disease, and starting fires so far, and provided my reasoning for dismissing all of them. As for your new set of absurdist ones: neither children, cookies, nor cars exist only to actively seek out and devour innocent life, nor does making them have the potential side effect of creating something that actively seeks out and devours innocent life, and certainly none of them has a chance of allowing something dangerous (i.e. high CR or class levels) into our world. Undead are unique in that respect. We can continue dancing this dance all day but your analogies just won't work.You've yet to demonstrate that the active desire to seek out and harm by these spontaneously-created undead is somehow more dangerous than the uncaring harm caused by cars, children, and allergen-laden cookies.

You can assert that these evil undead's active motivation to do so amplifies their threat over things which just don't care that would otherwise be of equal threat, but again, that's just arguing degree. Which immediately invalidates any claims that not providing quantified ties is just fine.


Fiat is "deciding that this is how it should work." Abstraction is "now that we've established this is how it works, there's no need to provide detailed math around it." I'm talking about the latter.Except that, if you don't establish any math behind this particular so-called abstraction, you can literally make the same claim about almost any action anybody would take, because there's no qualitative difference between "threats posed by an indeterminate number of actively evil spontaneously-generated undead" and "threats posed by the indifferent accidents of car crashes, accidental cross-contamination of allergens, and roving packs of starving wolves."

The argument for Libris Mortis's explanation being sufficient to explain why animate dead is [evil] is, simply, "Taking this action increases by some amount the threat that harm will be done to somebody somewhere." That's so vague, so abstract, that I can apply it, as I said, to nearly any action you can name.


We have a long and fruitful thread discussing why the trolley problem has nothing to do with alignment and everything to do with what a person's ethics would dictate that they do. I won't rehash it here other than to say - if you inhabited a D&D setting, and decided that you think the benefits to animating undead outweighed the potential risks, that is a perfectly valid decision for your character to make. Just as it's equally valid for the paladins who want you to stop to get all up in your grill over it.I am happy to agree: it's much more about L/C than G/E. And the Libris Mortis justification for why animate dead is [evil] is actually a disguised trolley problem. Thus, it "has nothing to do with alignment and everything to do with what a person's ethics would dictate that they do."

[Max_Killjoy]

Dead is dead, "mundane" vs "supernatural" hardly matters to the dead. A disease plague or an undead "plague" wiping out 1/3 of the population of a fantasy-setting continent in under a century has the same effect, doesn't it?

If the problem of animating undead is actually that it "increases the chances of something life-threatening randomly happening somewhere sometime", then you have to apply that standard beyond just animating undead.


And it's not about whether the results mesh with the rationale on the specific "I need a reason for the end result I want" -- the question is whether all the other effects of that reason have been fully explored... and in the case of "I want undead to be evil and scary and icky, so I'm going to add all these facts to the world to make that true..." the other effects of those added facts aren't really explored or followed through on.




Except that, if you don't establish any math behind this particular so-called abstraction, you can literally make the same claim about almost any action anybody would take, because there's no qualitative difference between "threats posed by an indeterminate number of actively evil spontaneously-generated undead" and "threats posed by the indifferent accidents of car crashes, accidental cross-contamination of allergens, and roving packs of starving wolves."

The argument for Libris Mortis's explanation being sufficient to explain why animate dead is [evil] is, simply, "Taking this action increases by some amount the threat that harm will be done to somebody somewhere." That's so vague, so abstract, that I can apply it, as I said, to nearly any action you can name.


Indeed, there's a HUGE difference between:

A) There are normally 100 undead arising spontaneously in the world each year. Every time you cast Animate Dead, there's a 0.1% chance that 1 more undead will arise spontaneously in the next year.

B) There are normally zero undead arising spontaneously in the world each year. Every time you cast Animate Dead, another undead creature will with certainty arise at a random location somewhere in the world.

Not know which of those the assertion in Liber Mortis is actually closer to, we can't really judge the action.

[Koo Rehtorb]

This whole thing seems a bit pointless. Animating the dead is evil because it ****s with the creature's soul. Which is directly supported by the fact that you can't raise people who were turned into undead. Even true resurrection, which creates an entirely new body for them, doesn't work so long as the undead is still around.

[Max_Killjoy]

This whole thing seems a bit pointless. Animating the dead is evil because it ****s with the creature's soul. Which is directly supported by the fact that you can't raise people who were turned into undead. Even true resurrection, which creates an entirely new body for them, doesn't work so long as the undead is still around.

And yet IIRC there's nothing in the actual descriptions of the mindless-undead-raising spells or of the "mindless" undead themselves that would indicate that there's a soul trapped in there.

Another area in which D&D's implicit setting is vague and even contradictory in detail?

But let's say it's true for sake of argument; that then would be an actual argument to classify animating the dead, especially against their will, as evil... separate from the reason being discussed at present.

[Talakeal]

This whole thing seems a bit pointless. Animating the dead is evil because it ****s with the creature's soul. Which is directly supported by the fact that you can't raise people who were turned into undead. Even true resurrection, which creates an entirely new body for them, doesn't work so long as the undead is still around.

Didn't we go over this a few pages ago?

There is nothing in any D&D book that claims being undead does anything to a creature's soul.

You can assume that the no resurrection clause means it traps the soul; but that is never stated, and nothing has ever stopped you from animating a body without a soul or stated that doing so harms the soul's new existence, whether that is ressurected, clone, or reincarnated into a new body, moved on to a new existance as an outsider/petitioner/ghost/god, or simply being trapped in a magic jar.

Edit: Also, Trap the Soul, the eight level spell that actually does trap souls, does not have the {evil} tag.


We have a long and fruitful thread discussing why the trolley problem has nothing to do with alignment and everything to do with what a person's ethics would dictate that they do. I won't rehash it here other than to say - if you inhabited a D&D setting, and decided that you think the benefits to animating undead outweighed the potential risks, that is a perfectly valid decision for your character to make. Just as it's equally valid for the paladins who want you to stop to get all up in your grill over it.

Doesn't page 9 of the BoED contradict this, and any other ethical dilemmas or appeals to subjective / nuanced morality?

[Gallowglass]

I have an out-of-curiosity question for the thread:

If you joined a game and the DM stated outright:

1. In this world creation of undead is evil and Evil.
2. It has a palpable effect on the fabric of the world. Over time and repeated application of undead energy literally has an adverse effect causing such things as spontaneous undead creation, disease, natural poisons and gradual shift of alignment to 'evil' for the standard populace.
3. Although the formulas for this will not be known by you, they exist in the background. So you can never be sure of when you actually push that lever to the 'on' position with any singular spell or action you take.
4. It is conceivable that you could find a way to undo or fix damage that is done through undead energy by using opposite types of energy.

What would be your reaction?

I ask because it seems like a fundamental thread in this...er... thread... .is that the rules are too vague and unspecified. That you want them to be more solidly codified and explained.

All four points I gave above exist or have been implied by past versions of the game. But never codified.

So would your reaction be:

Yes I can play the game you describe

or

No, I refuse, that's not the way the rules work

or

No, I need you to give the specifics behind this. I need to know how many times I can cast this spell before it causes this reaction.

[Psyren]

A threat is a threat. It doesn't matter to Suzy whether she dies to a wild wolf pack, a tornado slamming her repeatedly through the trees of a forrest, or a skeleton that just wants to rip her to pieces.

But it matters in how easy it is to mitigate. And as I demonstrated above, D&D settings consider a disease outbreak to be small potatoes compared to undead monsters. (Hint: the former doesn't need adventurers to solve nearly as often.) And as I also pointed out, undead monsters can cause disease outbreaks too, making them inherently worse.



I don't know that we do. I haven't seen in Max's posts anything to indicate you do with him, either. Are you under the impression that either of us are arguing that animate dead should not be an [evil] spell? So far as I know, neither of us are.

But you both think it should not be an evil act, correct? Or that it should be so minor of one that Good organizations opposing it is irrational.
(Meaning the morality of it rather than the descriptor there.)



You clearly don't; the standard by which this "individual act" is being termed "evil" can apply equally well to "driving a car" or "living in a city" or "baking peanut butter cookies."
...
You've yet to demonstrate that the active desire to seek out and harm by these spontaneously-created undead is somehow more dangerous than the uncaring harm caused by cars, children, and allergen-laden cookies.

You can assert that these evil undead's active motivation to do so amplifies their threat over things which just don't care that would otherwise be of equal threat, but again, that's just arguing degree. Which immediately invalidates any claims that not providing quantified ties is just fine.

The biggest problem is that you have no way to control which undead you get - all of them become more likely. That includes entities far more destructive than any car crash (or cookie.) You also can't control where - see any encounter table with undead in it, which on the Material is nearly all of them.



Except that, if you don't establish any math behind this particular so-called abstraction, you can literally make the same claim about almost any action anybody would take, because there's no qualitative difference between "threats posed by an indeterminate number of actively evil spontaneously-generated undead" and "threats posed by the indifferent accidents of car crashes, accidental cross-contamination of allergens, and roving packs of starving wolves."

The argument for Libris Mortis's explanation being sufficient to explain why animate dead is [evil] is, simply, "Taking this action increases by some amount the threat that harm will be done to somebody somewhere." That's so vague, so abstract, that I can apply it, as I said, to nearly any action you can name.

The key differences (beyond degree) are the nature, certainty, and relentlessness of that harm. Can you demonstrate how those car crashes, starving wolves, and allergens can pop up literally anywhere on the plane defying any predictive model? And furthermore, that they can infinitely spawn more of themselves, or obtain class levels, all of which weaken the barrier even more? And furthermore that they have active malice for the living? No, I didn't think so.



I am happy to agree: it's much more about L/C than G/E. And the Libris Mortis justification for why animate dead is [evil] is actually a disguised trolley problem. Thus, it "has nothing to do with alignment and everything to do with what a person's ethics would dictate that they do."

It's not a trolley problem at all. You have every ability to not animate undead; the trolley problem meanwhile has no way out, that's the whole point of it as a thought experiment.



Doesn't page 9 of the BoED contradict this, and any other ethical dilemmas or appeals to subjective / nuanced morality?

See above.

[Dragonexx]

This whole thing seems a bit pointless. Animating the dead is evil because it ****s with the creature's soul. Which is directly supported by the fact that you can't raise people who were turned into undead. Even true resurrection, which creates an entirely new body for them, doesn't work so long as the undead is still around.

Which is honestly weird. It should also be noted that that's only a rule in 3e. 1e, 2e, 4e, and 5e, don't have this restriction.

Here's an interesting analysis of this.



How souls really do and do not work according to RAW and my reasoning for why (WARNING: contains existentially disturbing arguments)

(Scroll to the bottom for a one-paragraph conclusion.)

The nature of the soul is a vital point of argument in the game, such as why undead are evil. However, the core rules never conclusively define what the soul is. There are only scattered and vague references to how souls work. I will try my best to organize and present these rules in order to provide an explanation for how souls do and do not work according to the rules as written (RAW). All arguments are based solely on content in the PRD and other content produced by Paizo.

According to the glossary under the “dead” entry, the magic rules under “bringing back the dead,” and the entries for “outer planes” under the environment and planar adventures rules, when a creature is dead then its soul leaves it body and travels to the outer planes to become a petitioner (see “petitioner” entry in Bestiary 2) while retaining a vague existential tie to their former life. Aside from alignment, most petitioners retain little or no vestige of their former self, logically making them different individuals. A petitioner loses their memories of the outer planes if brought back to life, logically equivalent to committing suicide. If a petitioner is destroyed, then they can only be recreated by a wish or miracle. Souls and petitioners are composed of positive energy. Becoming undead is never mentioned as preventing souls from leaving the body and entering the outer planes.

The spell speak with dead allows the caster to communicate with a dead body. The caster is not actually speaking with the soul of the deceased (which has already moved on to the outer planes), but a remnant of that soul that retains the deceased’s memories and a vestige of their personality.

Spells like create soul gem, familiar melding, magic jar, marionette possession, parasitic soul, soul bind, soul transfer and trap the soul allow the caster to store souls inside vessels or transfer souls into new bodies. These spells equate the soul with the “life force.” The souls so moved retain their memories and personality. These spells cannot affect constructs due to being necromancy effects. Mindless undead do not have souls and cannot be affected by such spells. Intelligent undead do have souls (or, if incorporeal, are souls) and can be affected by such spells. The negative energy that powers undead is considered their “life force” and likewise their souls.

According to soul stealing-related spells, there is a distinction between petitioners and most other outsiders. Petitioners are “creatures whose substance is a physical incarnation of a soul” while most other outsiders are “creatures formed from souls and planar material.” Incorporeal undead or a soul trapped in a gem are “bodiless souls.” Incorporeal creatures and petitioners are both “vulnerable souls that aren’t bound to mortal flesh.”

Stealing the soul of a dead creature does not prevent it from animating as an undead (such as with animate dead, create undead, create greater undead, or environmental effects), meaning that undead creatures do not need the same soul they possessed in life and becoming undead does not seem to prevent the original soul from traveling to the afterlife. In fact, they logically cannot retain the same soul since the souls of living creatures are composed of positive energy and the souls of undead are composed of negative energy and there is no indication either of the two forms of energy can freely convert to the other. It is possible to steal the soul of a dead creature, animate it as an intelligent undead, kill and steal the soul of said undead creature, and thus possess two different souls of positive and negative energy that originate from the same body.

Undead uprisings (see the entry under disasters) can cause the souls of bodies long since turned to dust to return as ghosts and spectral undead even if their souls have long since passed on to the outer planes and become outsiders. Clearly, these undead are not the same souls that passed on and implies that either living or dead creatures have multiple souls or the souls of undead have a separate origin from the soul they had in life.

Spells like clone, raise dead, reincarnate, resurrection, true resurrection, miracle and wish can be used to bring back the dead. Any corpse that has been an undead creature at any point in time cannot be restored to life by raise dead or reincarnate regardless of whether the soul is ready and willing. Neither can resurrection or true resurrection restore said soul if their former body is currently walking around as an undead creature, even though these spells do not require the body intact or even at all. However, the clone spell will automatically return these individuals to life within their clone as soon as they die even if their original body is later animated as an undead.

The argument that undead creatures are “evil” because they keep their original souls in a state of torment is wrong (at least partly so, but not in the way you would think; see below for my conclusions). Undead do not have the same souls they possessed in life and in fact have entirely new souls composed of negative energy. Mindless undead do not have souls at all. Regardless, raise dead and similar spells (except clone) imply that undeath somehow prevents a soul from returning to life but, since undead creatures have no causal connection to the soul they had in life, there is no logical explanation for why this is. Becoming undead is not specifically mentioned as preventing revivification under the magic rules for “bringing back the dead” even though it is implied in the previously mentioned spell descriptions. As this restriction did not exist in 1e/2e D&D and was removed in 4e/5e D&D, I am going to assume it is an oversight.

Constructs cannot be brought back from the dead and do not appear to possess souls (with the exception of soulbound constructs); golems are technically animated by imprisoned elemental spirits but still considered not to have souls. Outsiders have no duality between body and soul, making them more difficult to bring back from the dead. Undead cannot be brought back from the dead, only returned to the life they had before they were undead.

Souls can be split without harming the donating soul, using smaller portions to create black soul shards and soulbound constructs. Soulbound constructs lose immunity to mind-affecting effects due to the presence of a soul. Constructs, despite apparently lacking souls, can be created using infusions of positive energy (such as that produced by a ravid) or by binding living elementals into inanimate matter. Ordinary corpses, technically being objects, can be animated in the same way to create flesh golems or animated objects that merely look like zombie or skeletons.

Negative and positive energy are morally neutral, yet spells that create undead are universally evil and all undead with the exception of ghosts are automatically evil. No explanation for this is given beyond vague statements that undead are somehow “unnatural,” which is logically fallacious as negative energy is natural and living creatures such as dhampir and sceaduinar are naturally powered by negative energy (i.e. their souls/life force are composed of negative energy). It is possible for undead to be powered by positive energy like living creatures (such as by using undeath inversion). Negative and positive energy do not appear to correlate with life or death, as both are equally capable of powering living and undead.

Since undead are not unnatural and do not have the souls they had in life, there must be some other reason for why the vast majority are inherently evil. There is a simple solution: undead are animated by fiends in a fashion not unlike how golems are animated by imprisoned elemental spirits. This would easily explain why most undead are inherently evil (like fiends), harmed by holy water (also like fiends), and exhibit a need to feed on the positive energy of living creatures (such as fiends) despite being animated by negative energy.

This does not explain the existence of non-evil ghosts. This can be explained by assuming that all creatures have two souls a la the Hun and Po of Taoist thought: one composed of positive energy that passes on to the outer planes after death, and one composed of negative energy that remains in the body after death and be subjected to speak with dead, overridden by a fiend to animate the corpse, or forced out of the corpse as an incorporeal undead creature. For reference, I will refer to the former as the "anima" and the latter as the "animus." A ghost, in contrast to other spectral undead, is animated through sheer willpower on the part of the animus rather than with the help of a fiend; spectral undead, in contrast, are the result of contagious fiendish possession and thus explains why ghosts generally cannot create spawn.

When a person dies and is split into their constituent souls, they effectively cease to exist as the same person. The anima becomes a petitioner and retains virtually none of its original memories or personality with rare (partial) exceptions, making it logically a different individual despite retaining its alignment (i.e. its conscience and karmic debt). The animus retains memories, personality, and alignment even if it otherwise lacks motivating drives. If the corpse is possessed by a fiend to create an undead creature, said fiend will either do nothing more than animate the body like a construct (in the case of mindless/soulless undead) or replace the anima for the purposes of necromancy effects (in the case of intelligent/ensouled undead).

The result of these metaphysics is perversely opposed to how people in both the game world and in real life normally view the nature of souls. An individual is defined by their memories, and without those memories they are not the same person. A petitioner may be a person’s anima, but it not them. If a person has split into both a petitioner (anima) and a ghost (animus) after death, which is in fact the default state of existence for ghosts, the ghost is an actually the closest thing to a continuation of that person since it retains their memories and personality. Putting a ghost to rest does not send them to peaceful rest in the afterlife because the petitioner is already doing that. By ending a ghost’s existence, you are actually consigning them to oblivion (at least until they are brought back to life or reanimated). In fact, all undead that retain their memories are direct continuations of the people they were in life and their petitioners are ironically nothing more than echoes of their former selves. The prejudice against undead, while justified, has actually resulted in the murder of numerous innocent people possessed by fiends against their will in addition to those who were already evil in life (who presumably don't care about the possession).

One could make a case that, a la Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, summoning the petitioner back to the material plane and forcing it back into its now undead body would cause the undead to regain their original alignment (and thus become the original person again) as the original anima overrides the fiend's control. This would not change the fact that they are still undead and the fiend animating them might still suffer a hunger for positive energy. It would, however, allow for non-evil undead characters who angst about having to feed on the living against their will until they can be resurrected. But I digress.

Death in the RAW, for all intents and purposes, is actually the end of a person’s existence. Their anima enters the outer planes to become a petitioner without actually continuing their former consciousness. Their animus remains with the corpse, devoid of any consciousness unless animated as undead. Clearly, the designers were not communicating when they were writing these rules because I find it very odd if this profoundly disturbing state of affairs in the RAW was their intention.

EDIT: I have recently read "The River of Souls" (TROS) essay in Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh. The essay directly contradicts the PRD as well as its own internal logic:

TROS makes a distinction between souls and petitioners, stating that souls spend a variable period of time in Purgatory before becoming petitioners. The PRD implies this only vaguely at best and seems to assume that becoming a petitioner is both guaranteed and immediate after Purgatory is reached.
The PRD states petitioners retain only fragments of their living memories and almost never any vestige of personality. TROS states that petitioners retain their memories for thousands of years.
The PRD states that petitioners are returned to mortal life by raise dead and similar spells. TROS states that petitioners can never be returned to life, but that the god of death can see the future and sets souls aside if they are ever going to be raised. (Note: The god of death hates undead.)
TROS states that undead retain their living souls, which contradicts the point above as the god of death had been previously stated to hate undead and logically would never hold souls back so they could one day be raised as undead if this was the case. However, TROS specifically mentions "spontaneous" undead (that is, not deliberately created by a necromancer's spell), which seems to imply that such undead only arise from souls that choose to remain behind and that souls that have entered Purgatory will never be raised in such a way. This create two problems
If spontaneous undead only arise if the soul remains behind (ignoring mindless undead as being soulless), then that means the undead created by an undead uprising are the result of souls staying behind for indefinite periods of time including centuries and millennia after death. This seems like it would be considered a huge problem for the god of death because it means huge numbers of souls are remaining on the Material Plane after death, orders of magnitude more than those that are entering Purgatory. Yet this is handwaved in TROS as being inconsequential to the timescale of the multiverse and thus the god of death doesn't care one whiff, despite being stated to hate undead to the point of making it a metaphysical law that all undead are evil (or in the case of non-evil ghosts, doomed to become so).
It is not explained where non-spontaneous undead get their souls from. If every create undead and similar spells summoned the original soul from Purgatory, that should be an annoyance for the god of death and he should be expected to bar it from occurring. Indeed, if all intelligent undead require their original souls, then by TROS's own internal logic the raising of undead should be impossible should the soul be unavailable (such as by becoming a petitioner). Only souls that could put up some kind of defense against the god of death, at least long enough to escape Purgatory, should be able to become undead and then only if they wanted to become undead badly enough to risk the wrath of the god of death.


As such, while I will take the majority of the essay as true, these contradictions will be ignored and superseded by my reasoning above.


In summary, every person has two souls: the anima and animus. The anima is the conscience, karmic debt, and alignment. The animus is the bulk of the memories and personality. Upon death, the anima departs to the outer planes where it is judged and becomes a petitioner while the animus remains in the corpse and only rarely regains consciousness. Undead are generally created, deliberately or spontaneously, by calling forth a least fiend and forcing it to puppeteer the corpse and/or the animal. In the case of undead that create spawn, this possession is contagious. In the case of ghosts, the anima forces itself into a semblance of life through sheer willpower and thus retains its original alignment. In the case of liches, the anima and animus are placed into a phylactery during the transition and thus retained into undeath; liches are generally evil because the ritual used to create them is so terrible only evil (or truly desperate) individuals would attempt it. Hypothetically, any evil undead other than a ghost or lich could be changed back to their original alignment by summoning their anima and binding it back into the corpse. In which case the undead, if they regained their original alignment, would retain the fiend providing their animating force and would still need to feed on life force if they did before (which is a great source of angst, btw).

Last edited by BoxCrayonTales; Sunday, 15th March, 2015 at 04:07 AM.

[Psyren]

I have an out-of-curiosity question for the thread:

If you joined a game and the DM stated outright:

1. In this world creation of undead is evil and Evil.
2. It has a palpable effect on the fabric of the world. Over time and repeated application of undead energy literally has an adverse effect causing such things as spontaneous undead creation, disease, natural poisons and gradual shift of alignment to 'evil' for the standard populace.
3. Although the formulas for this will not be known by you, they exist in the background. So you can never be sure of when you actually push that lever to the 'on' position with any singular spell or action you take.
4. It is conceivable that you could find a way to undo or fix damage that is done through undead energy by using opposite types of energy.

What would be your reaction?

I ask because it seems like a fundamental thread in this...er... thread... .is that the rules are too vague and unspecified. That you want them to be more solidly codified and explained.

All four points I gave above exist or have been implied by past versions of the game. But never codified.

So would your reaction be:

Yes I can play the game you describe

or

No, I refuse, that's not the way the rules work

or

No, I need you to give the specifics behind this. I need to know how many times I can cast this spell before it causes this reaction.

For me it would be one of three responses:

1) Yes, I feel like playing a necromancer. I'm okay with whatever alignment repeated application of this tactic makes me. Evil characters can still be protagonists/heroes after all. However, I accept that I may have to be circumspect about my actions around certain NPCs, and if there is a paladin or other do-gooder in the party, I'll be sure to discuss this with them out-of-game before committing to the concept.

2) No, I'd rather not be an evil character (or a character whose alignment may become evil through the commission of questionable acts.) I'll play something else.

3) I'm not necessarily setting out to play an evil character, but I'm okay rolling the dice. My hope is that the scope of this specific campaign should be short enough, or the stakes high enough, for me to actually stay neutral even if I make this a main tactic. However, depending on what ends up happening and how long the campaign ends up running, I'm willing to accept that the GM's judgement may change, at which point I will decide (both in and out of character) whether to continue these actions or not, and what that might mean for me and for the party. Pinging as evil one day could be an interesting roleplay moment.

[HouseRules]

For much of human history, there wasn't a difference between the building a city, and dumping a bunch of dangerous waste without much concern for where it ended up once it was outside the city. Or even inside it.

True, eating **** because the Early Colonies in America **** upstream and drink downstream.

[Fable Wright]

Comparing a mundane threat in a supernatural world to a supernatural threat in a supernatural world seems... shortsighted to me.

Death comes. One near- corpse wanders into town, horrible black pustules on its body. The town guard stab it, and falls, black blood spilling in the streets.

Then Little Suzie grows the pustules, and has to be put down. One by one, the townsfolk are turned and killed, horribly, until only a few survivors are spared. Why, they ask. Why them? Eventually they rationalize it. It's because they were pure. Pure of heart. That's what kept them safe from the evil.

Did I just describe an undead attack, or a plague?

Frankly, plagues are deadlier than undead in D&D. Undead you can see. Find the source, kill them all, and you're done. But disease? One rat can cause 20 saves vs disease per day. Let's say 75% of commoners fail the DC 15 save. 15 cases in a day. Per rat. A cleric can cure maybe 10 per day, and have them all be infected again that night. And absolutely none of this work decreases the source of the plague. To say nothing of Cholera, which required inventing a whole new Profession skill before we even figured out what caused it.

Assuming the supernatural is scarier just because we don't have it in real life seems... short sighted to me.

EDIT: I will note, however, that Contagion is also an [Evil] spell. Honestly, I could accept Evil spells just being... well, pollution.

Does having a car instead of a bike make you evil? Probably not.
Does making a city of industrial smokestacks billowing dust into the sky without regard for others or the environment make you evil? There's a case to be made. Even if you're using all of them to generate power to cure sick children, you're making a lot of other people that you don't care about sick as a result.
Would the Gods assign labels to pollution, with Good gods favoring less pollution, and Evil gods favoring more? Probably.

Why does burning coal or gas pollute the environment and cause worse conditions for everyone else, instead of being naturally clean-burning and making the air cleaner? Well, there's an answer related to the laws of the universe, but to simplify game mechanics it's generally better to accept it has the [Pollution] tag and call it at that.

[Quertus]

I have an out-of-curiosity question for the thread:

I would either investigate spells to heal the environment (as I've had characters do with other dangerous powers, like Chronomancy), or try to remove all the dangerous "moral compunctions" from the world by animating everything I can get my hands on. Either sounds fun.

[Zombimode]

Not to add yet another tangent to an already long discussion, but I have seen a few mentions of undead being used for labor. Has anyone ever taken the time to sketch out what that would look like, or the investment it would entail, what jobs they would do, that kind of stuff?

There are some approaches in published settings.

Eberron has a couple of related cases, especially Karnath and it's undead troops:
At some point during the 100 year long Last War Karnath started to use undead troops in large numbers and in an organized fashion. Since Karnath has a rich and deep military tradition, the use of undead quickly entered and shaped military doctrine.
Now, the reasons for introducing undead to the military were far more involved and complicated then a simple/naive "makes sense" approach. Indeed, these changes were accompanied with widespread cultural changes, spearheaded by a new state religion (the Blood of Vol) that introduced pro-undead thoughts into the public.
And of course things didn't go completely smooth. For the most part, undead were not integrated into the living battalions the same way Warforged and other constructs were: even with the widespread acceptance of undead as soldiers in the general populace, the acceptance among those who had actual contact with the undead was a lot more ambigous. And while the influx of more troops and new strategic and tactical possibility definitely helped Karnath, it vilefied the nation in the eyes of the other factions.
Karnath later abolished the Blood of Vol as the state religion (even declaring it a state enemy), but the use of undead in the military was to deeply rooted that it continues to the modern day.
Modern Karnath has a very conflicted relationship to the undead: they form a vital part of their military might, but acceptance has droped. But on the other hand they are also somewhat traditional, and there are still many Karnathi that are supporters of the Blood of Vol in one way or the other.


To me the most important thing about Eberrons approach is that its main goal is to provide interessting conflict. It's not an undead utopia, it is not a clean, pristine relationship. It is difficult, nuanced, dirty, dripped in religion, betrayal, cultural upheaval, international repercussions on a political and cultural scale.

On the other hand, it is my impression that the most vocal supporters of concepts like undead labor force, at least in this forum, don't want that to be difficult. They want an utopia. That's why they typically reject things like Libris Mortis negative energy level approach and similar concepts.

[Psyren]

Frankly, plagues are deadlier than undead in D&D. Undead you can see. Find the source, kill them all, and you're done.

Bold is the big difference between disease and undeath, and your big mistake. They pop up everywhere, there is no clear "source." Check any encounter table. Dungeon? Undead. Temperate Forest? Undead. Marshes? Undead. Hills, Mountains, Deserts, Plains, Urban, Wilderness? Check, check, check, check. And that's just the Material plane. And that's with necromancy being generally frowned on/not practiced routinely except by evildoers (i.e. the default state of things.) Think how much worse it would likely be if we went all Tragedy of the Commons by animating thousands more of them to be a workforce.

By contrast, a cityborne plague doesn't have a random planewide point of origin; it would have to start in (or be brought to) that city. And cities can therefore take reasonable precautions against that. Which they do - forbidding travel from ridden areas, building hospitals and churches, quarantining districts, sealing off trade. They can do none of that against undead in the wilderness or countryside where innocents live and their food comes from; their best bet is to dispatch guardsmen, and pray that whatever popped up isn't something they need heroes to deal with instead, like a Greater Shadow.

Lastly, I said supernatural world for a reason. Pretty sure the Black Death was missing a bunch of conveniences that D&D settings have; no paladins and monks, no adepts or clerics, no Periapt of Health, no Purify Food and Drink, no Remove Disease, no Lesser Restoration...


Does having a car instead of a bike make you evil? Probably not.

Yeah, not touching that one.

[Max_Killjoy]

On the other hand, it is my impression that the most vocal supporters of concepts like undead labor force, at least in this forum, don't want that to be difficult. They want an utopia. That's why they typically reject things like Libris Mortis negative energy level approach and similar concepts.


Nope.

We're going after the ignored (and sometimes actively denied) inconsistencies, implications, and complications of those approaches and concepts.



Bold is the big difference between disease and undeath, and your big mistake. They pop up everywhere, there is no clear "source." Check any encounter table. Dungeon? Undead. Temperate Forest? Undead. Marshes? Undead. Hills, Mountains, Deserts, Plains, Urban, Wilderness? Check, check, check, check. And that's just the Material plane. And that's with necromancy being generally frowned on/not practiced routinely except by evildoers (i.e. the default state of things.) Think how much worse it would likely be if we went all Tragedy of the Commons by animating thousands more of them to be a workforce.

By contrast, a cityborne plague doesn't have a random planewide point of origin; it would have to start in (or be brought to) that city. And cities can therefore take reasonable precautions against that. Which they do - forbidding travel from ridden areas, building hospitals and churches, quarantining districts, sealing off trade. They can do none of that against undead in the wilderness or countryside where innocents live and their food comes from; their best bet is to dispatch guardsmen, and pray that whatever popped up isn't something they need heroes to deal with instead, like a Greater Shadow.


I think you're looking at disease with far too modern a knowledge level.

In terms of how disease outbreaks were experienced and perceived by people living in that era, before the advent of modern microbiology, sanitation, and medicine, the things you say about undead outbreaks apply to disease outbreaks. In fact the fears and memes underlying the "undead outbreak" of the modern media are parallel with the "epidemic horror" story, and both have their origin in the fears and concerns that entered the deeper cultural psyche over 1000s of years of facing disease across all walks of life. Even today, look at an Ebola outbreak, coming out of the remote wilderness with a single person encountering a bat in the wild and being exposed to the virus... and how hard it is to fight primal fears and total misconceptions, never mind the disease itself.

[Segev]

This whole thing seems a bit pointless. Animating the dead is evil because it ****s with the creature's soul. Which is directly supported by the fact that you can't raise people who were turned into undead. Even true resurrection, which creates an entirely new body for them, doesn't work so long as the undead is still around.And this is my point: it needs to do something like this, but it needs to hit a sweet spot where it's not quite so evil that casting it once is nigh-unforgivable (per the rules saying that only evil people will cast it REGULARLY), and it can't be made accidentally ludicrously powerful by implication (e.g. matching raise dead for its grip on the soul, or even exceeding it for involuntary grip on the soul with no save).

Hence my preferred notion that it rips pieces off of the original soul; the more sentient the undead, the more of the soul it cleaves off. Leaving the soul in pain, but not necessarily unbearably so, and the afterlife-dwelling part of the spirit confused and hassled by visions of what its unliving counterpart is doing.


I have an out-of-curiosity question for the thread:

If you joined a game and the DM stated outright:

1. In this world creation of undead is evil and Evil.
2. It has a palpable effect on the fabric of the world. Over time and repeated application of undead energy literally has an adverse effect causing such things as spontaneous undead creation, disease, natural poisons and gradual shift of alignment to 'evil' for the standard populace.
3. Although the formulas for this will not be known by you, they exist in the background. So you can never be sure of when you actually push that lever to the 'on' position with any singular spell or action you take.
4. It is conceivable that you could find a way to undo or fix damage that is done through undead energy by using opposite types of energy.

What would be your reaction?

I ask because it seems like a fundamental thread in this...er... thread... .is that the rules are too vague and unspecified. That you want them to be more solidly codified and explained.

All four points I gave above exist or have been implied by past versions of the game. But never codified.

So would your reaction be:

Yes I can play the game you describe

or

No, I refuse, that's not the way the rules work

or

No, I need you to give the specifics behind this. I need to know how many times I can cast this spell before it causes this reaction.I'd play it. If I were feeling like making a point about it, I'd play a necromancer who challenged just about any act any "good" person did as being "just as evil" as animating the dead through philosophical debate, and probably make him fairly charismatic so that I could start spreading a movement.

If I wasn't feeling like making a point about it, I'd question the DM on his consistency, shrug, and move on, because frankly, I play evil necromancers because they're fun; I don't care that they're labeled evil. I CAN play in a game with inconsistencies; I just tend to frustrate the DM from time to time when I point them out, and refuse to be bothered by the accusation of "you're so evil!" over things I'm doing that...either aren't, or are no more evil than things that don't get called out when others do them.


But it matters in how easy it is to mitigate. And as I demonstrated above, D&D settings consider a disease outbreak to be small potatoes compared to undead monsters. (Hint: the former doesn't need adventurers to solve nearly as often.) And as I also pointed out, undead monsters can cause disease outbreaks too, making them inherently worse.No, D&D considers undead a more easily-solved problem; adventurers can just kill them. When a plague comes up, it usually just runs its course, slaughtering hundreds or thousands; if it IS solvable, it's usually adventurers sent to get the curative potion or plant or what-have-you.

This is more a function of D&D as an adventurer-focused game than anything else.


But you both think it should not be an evil act, correct? Or that it should be so minor of one that Good organizations opposing it is irrational.
(Meaning the morality of it rather than the descriptor there.)Nope. I've said repeatedly that I'm fine with it being [evil]. I just want the reason for its evil to actually make it feel like something a good person would have qualms about doing, because it's unquestionably EVIL (even if it's minor evil). "You're subtly shifting the odds of a spontaneous undead appearing somewhere, sometime, to be just a little bit higher" just doesn't rise to that level. And if it DID, then a ton of other actions that are not considered [evil] would rise to the same level of "evil."

I've even outlined - briefly in this very post, and in more detail elsewhere in this thread - what my current best effort at designing its evil would be. It involves cutting or stretching or otherwise straining souls and using bits of them and causing active discomfort (if not outright pain) and distraction (if not outright madness) to souls who should be focused on enjoying (to whatever extent they're otherwise able) their afterlives.


The biggest problem is that you have no way to control which undead you get - all of them become more likely. That includes entities far more destructive than any car crash (or cookie.) You also can't control where - see any encounter table with undead in it, which on the Material is nearly all of them.And you have no control over whether your car crash hits a single little old lady crossing the street or a bus full of elementary schoolers and shoves it off of a bridge or causes a 30-car pileup that makes a delivery of vital organs go bad and causes hundreds to die who otherwise wouldn't have.

You're not making a useful or valid point, here, Psyren. You're trying to argue, simultaneously, "Undead are far worse than any of these, because you can't stop them from being stronger and more deadly and they'll crop up in significant numbers," and, "It doesn't matter how many of them or what kind pop up; any amount is too much and automatically evil." But you can't use the first to say, "Therefore, undead cropping up are worse than any other kind of potential unfortunate consequence," while using the latter to say, "It doesn't matter what hte numbers are." Because you're trying to first say that the numbers are waaaaay worse for undead than for any sort of non-undead-related disaster that increases in likelihood with every instance of actions people do all the time without considering them "evil," and the second to say that the numbers are irrelevant, because ANY increase is evil enough that doing it regularly makes you evil.

You can't have it both ways. Either casting animate dead regularly is more evil than driving a car regularly because the quantified harm is greater from animating the dead in any amount than from the increased risk of car related accidents with each car on the road...OR the numbers don't matter and the fact that casting animate dead regularly causes more undead in any amount at all makes it evil to do it regularly and therefore also driving a car regularly is evil because the increased chance by any amount at all that a deadly car crash will happen is also evil.

Worse, you are still, apparently, thinking I'm trying to say "casting animate dead shouldn't be evil." I'm not. I'm saying that the Libris Mortis explanation is insufficiently evil to justify it. It needs to be doing something more as a side-effect that is inescapable every time you cast it. Something minor enough that you can, perhaps, justify it temporarily in extremis, so a good person might be able to bring himself to do it. "I'm sorry, fallen one, but we are desperate and we need your body's help for this good cause," might be an acceptable palliative to the conscience, done rarely enough and with respect and care to rectify the wrong as soon as possible, but it has to be something that actually would tinge the conscience if you knew what you were doing. And it has to be something that wouldn't equally apply to other activities that nobody considers evil.


The key differences (beyond degree) are the nature, certainty, and relentlessness of that harm. Can you demonstrate how those car crashes, starving wolves, and allergens can pop up literally anywhere on the plane defying any predictive model? And furthermore, that they can infinitely spawn more of themselves, or obtain class levels, all of which weaken the barrier even more? And furthermore that they have active malice for the living? No, I didn't think so.I don't need to demonstrate any of that. You're once again talking about degree. These things already happen with undead. The casting of animate dead repeatedly, at worst, has a small impact on the likelihood of them happening more. There is no "beyond degree," here. That's the sole sum of your argument. "These things based on undead are more serious in degree than these other things based on accidental harm caused by other activities."

If every time you climbed into a car, you were guaranteed to run over either a cat or a human being, it would be a pretty evil act to climb into a car. If every time you climbed into a car, you were guaranteeing that at least one person would be hit by a car, even if it's not you hitting them, that would also be pretty evil.

There's no way to say, "If only I hadn't cast animate dead fifty times, that wightpocalypse wouldn't have hit Smalltown!" Not unless we start assigning numbers to the probabilities and are able to determine that the increase is non-negligible with each casting.

To put it in modern signal processing terms, we need to know what the general "background noise" of undead in the world is, and how many undead you have to animate to even be noticeable against it.

That. Requires. Numbers.

Saying "oh, no, you don't need numbers" means you can argue that driving a car is just as evil, since it also increases "bad numbers." And no amount of "but it's not directed!" will change that, the moment you try to make that argument, you're implicitly assuming numbers and just refusing to acknowledge it.


It's not a trolley problem at all. You have every ability to not animate undead; the trolley problem meanwhile has no way out, that's the whole point of it as a thought experiment.Anything I do with the undead is going to create some good, unless I'm using them expressly for evil. In which case whether the spell itself is evil or not is as moot as whether fireball is evil or not when it's used by an evil wizard to burn down an orphanage to get his favorite orphan crisp snacks.

The moment I can do some good with the undead I animate, it's a trolley problem of whether I'm doing more good by animating them for that good deed (or ongoing goodness), or more harm by animating them and causing that general rise in vague probability that some uncontrolled undead somewhere will spontaneously arise.

[Max_Killjoy]

Nope. I've said repeatedly that I'm fine with it being [evil]. I just want the reason for its evil to actually make it feel like something a good person would have qualms about doing, because it's unquestionably EVIL (even if it's minor evil). "You're subtly shifting the odds of a spontaneous undead appearing somewhere, sometime, to be just a little bit higher" just doesn't rise to that level. And if it DID, then a ton of other actions that are not considered [evil] would rise to the same level of "evil."


Same here -- I have zero problem with it being evil (I don't care about "Evil" in the alignment or cosmic cause-we-said-so sense one dang bit), but it has to be evil for a reason that doesn't then broad-brush a lot of other things as "evil" that aren't evil by functional standards.

I'm fine with it being evil, I think in most settings perhaps it should be evil, but the reasoning as to why it's evil as to be more rigorous and robust than "cosmic stuff" or "because we said so" or vague assertions about maybe some other undead maybe somewhere else sometime maybe.

Which is why I posted this earlier... didn't see any response to it:



Indeed, there's a HUGE difference between:

A) There are normally 100 undead arising spontaneously in the world each year. Every time you cast Animate Dead, there's a 0.1% chance that 1 more undead will arise spontaneously in the next year.

B) There are normally zero undead arising spontaneously in the world each year. Every time you cast Animate Dead, another undead creature will with certainty arise at a random location somewhere in the world.

Not knowing which of those the assertion in Liber Mortis is actually closer to, we can't really come to a conclusion.


So I'd ask the thread in general, which is it?

[Psyren]

No, D&D considers undead a more easily-solved problem; adventurers can just kill them. When a plague comes up, it usually just runs its course, slaughtering hundreds or thousands; if it IS solvable, it's usually adventurers sent to get the curative potion or plant or what-have-you.

This is more a function of D&D as an adventurer-focused game than anything else.

You're still ignoring that adventurers are only barely solving it now with the current paradigm of necromancy being overwhelmingly discouraged in society. In other words, even with it being kept as tamped down as it is, innocent people are still in constant peril from undead no matter what biome they live in. For good faiths/organizations (and by proxy, the game as a whole) to say "you have a moral imperative not to make this tenuous situation any worse than it is" is therefore a reasonable stance.



You're not making a useful or valid point, here, Psyren. You're trying to argue, simultaneously, "Undead are far worse than any of these, because you can't stop them from being stronger and more deadly and they'll crop up in significant numbers," and, "It doesn't matter how many of them or what kind pop up; any amount is too much and automatically evil." But you can't use the first to say, "Therefore, undead cropping up are worse than any other kind of potential unfortunate consequence," while using the latter to say, "It doesn't matter what hte numbers are." Because you're trying to first say that the numbers are waaaaay worse for undead than for any sort of non-undead-related disaster that increases in likelihood with every instance of actions people do all the time without considering them "evil," and the second to say that the numbers are irrelevant, because ANY increase is evil enough that doing it regularly makes you evil.

You can't have it both ways. Either casting animate dead regularly is more evil than driving a car regularly because the quantified harm is greater from animating the dead in any amount than from the increased risk of car related accidents with each car on the road...OR the numbers don't matter and the fact that casting animate dead regularly causes more undead in any amount at all makes it evil to do it regularly and therefore also driving a car regularly is evil because the increased chance by any amount at all that a deadly car crash will happen is also evil.

Worse, you are still, apparently, thinking I'm trying to say "casting animate dead shouldn't be evil." I'm not. I'm saying that the Libris Mortis explanation is insufficiently evil to justify it. It needs to be doing something more as a side-effect that is inescapable every time you cast it. Something minor enough that you can, perhaps, justify it temporarily in extremis, so a good person might be able to bring himself to do it. "I'm sorry, fallen one, but we are desperate and we need your body's help for this good cause," might be an acceptable palliative to the conscience, done rarely enough and with respect and care to rectify the wrong as soon as possible, but it has to be something that actually would tinge the conscience if you knew what you were doing. And it has to be something that wouldn't equally apply to other activities that nobody considers evil.

I don't need to demonstrate any of that. You're once again talking about degree. These things already happen with undead. The casting of animate dead repeatedly, at worst, has a small impact on the likelihood of them happening more. There is no "beyond degree," here. That's the sole sum of your argument. "These things based on undead are more serious in degree than these other things based on accidental harm caused by other activities."

If every time you climbed into a car, you were guaranteed to run over either a cat or a human being, it would be a pretty evil act to climb into a car. If every time you climbed into a car, you were guaranteeing that at least one person would be hit by a car, even if it's not you hitting them, that would also be pretty evil.

There's no way to say, "If only I hadn't cast animate dead fifty times, that wightpocalypse wouldn't have hit Smalltown!" Not unless we start assigning numbers to the probabilities and are able to determine that the increase is non-negligible with each casting.

To put it in modern signal processing terms, we need to know what the general "background noise" of undead in the world is, and how many undead you have to animate to even be noticeable against it.

That. Requires. Numbers.
...
Saying "oh, no, you don't need numbers" means you can argue that driving a car is just as evil, since it also increases "bad numbers." And no amount of "but it's not directed!" will change that, the moment you try to make that argument, you're implicitly assuming numbers and just refusing to acknowledge it.


I'm not bothering with numbers for two reasons:

(1) I genuinely don't think there is any number that would convince you. Even if unrestricted necromancy increased the total undead appearances by one, you still have no control over what that one even is or where it shows up. It could be CR 1/2, or it could be CR 20. It could be capable of making spawn, or not. It could be capable of casting spells, or not. The potential upside of that risk is just too great.

And (2) The designers have answered your question already. The number is "enough so that good deities instruct their followers to prevent this activity at all costs." You and I don't have that number, but they do. Now, you're free not to accept that at your table, that's perfectly fine, but that is how the default game was designed.

So by all means, construct your utopian post-labor setting with an undead workforce, and either say there are no negative consequences or handwave that whichever ones pop up are perfectly manageable by mortals. I won't be playing in it so I don't really care either way.



Nope. I've said repeatedly that I'm fine with it being [evil]. I just want the reason for its evil to actually make it feel like something a good person would have qualms about doing, because it's unquestionably EVIL (even if it's minor evil). "You're subtly shifting the odds of a spontaneous undead appearing somewhere, sometime, to be just a little bit higher" just doesn't rise to that level.

To me it does rise to that level, end of.



Anything I do with the undead is going to create some good, unless I'm using them expressly for evil. In which case whether the spell itself is evil or not is as moot as whether fireball is evil or not when it's used by an evil wizard to burn down an orphanage to get his favorite orphan crisp snacks.

The moment I can do some good with the undead I animate, it's a trolley problem of whether I'm doing more good by animating them for that good deed (or ongoing goodness), or more harm by animating them and causing that general rise in vague probability that some uncontrolled undead somewhere will spontaneously arise.

No, it's still not a trolley problem. In the TP, doing nothing still results in someone getting hurt. Who is harmed by you not having a bunch of undead? Is society (D&D or otherwise) failing without an undead labor force? Heck, is a necromancer adventurer even needed in an adventuring party?

[Brookshw]

You can't have it both ways. Either casting animate dead regularly is more evil than driving a car regularly because the quantified harm is greater from animating the dead in any amount than from the increased risk of car related accidents with each car on the road...OR the numbers don't matter and the fact that casting animate dead regularly causes more undead in any amount at all makes it evil to do it regularly and therefore also driving a car regularly is evil because the increased chance by any amount at all that a deadly car crash will happen is also evil.


Though I don't have a horse in this race, I don't think you're properly representing Psyren's point as concerns the 3.5 fluff/weakening the veil/whatever. Driving a car may cause more car accidents, but the ratio of car accidents vs. cars on the road doesn't change just because more people are driving cars*. In contrast by Psyren's position, the more undead are created the more the ratio of undead....manifestation(?) shifts. You're talking volume, he's talking ratios. At least that's my take away.

*There's probably something to be said for more cars = heavy traffic which would have an adverse effect on the ratio of car accidents. From a cursory review, it looks like data is primarily tracked by volume and not percentage so I don't know if there's a solid correlation to be drawn. Heck, higher volume might result in more careful driving. I don't know.

[Max_Killjoy]

You're still ignoring that adventurers are only barely solving it now with the current paradigm of necromancy being overwhelmingly discouraged in society. In other words, even with it being kept as tamped down as it is, innocent people are still in constant peril from undead no matter what biome they live in. For good faiths/organizations (and by proxy, the game as a whole) to say "you have a moral imperative not to make this tenuous situation any worse than it is" is therefore a reasonable stance.



I'm not bothering with numbers for two reasons:

(1) I genuinely don't think there is any number that would convince you. Even if unrestricted necromancy increased the total undead appearances by one, you still have no control over what that one even is or where it shows up. It could be CR 1/2, or it could be CR 20. It could be capable of making spawn, or not. It could be capable of casting spells, or not. The potential upside of that risk is just too great.

And (2) The designers have answered your question already. The number is "enough so that good deities instruct their followers to prevent this activity at all costs." You and I don't have that number, but they do. Now, you're free not to accept that at your table, that's perfectly fine, but that is how the default game was designed.

So by all means, construct your utopian post-labor setting with an undead workforce, and either say there are no negative consequences or handwave that whichever ones pop up are perfectly manageable by mortals. I won't be playing in it so I don't really care either way.


This seems to be loaded with unspoken presumptions and assumptions.

A) That adventurers are the only thing stopping undead, and that they're just barely holding the undead back, and that innocent people are in constant peril from undead. That's entirely setting-specific, and doesn't appear to be the case in most published settings -- though things do get distorted by the decision to focus the setting depictions on "challenges for adventurers".

1) That the risk is "of course that dire", when you refuse to even entertain a discussion of the actual risk.

2) That the designers ever actually put that much thought into the thing, which frankly I will never believe they did even if they now came out and claimed they did, because there is ZERO evidence that they ever actually considered it. There's simply no evidence to suggest that there was any deliberate design decision there beyond "we want necromancers to be evil, and the undead dangerous, so what sort of "reason" sticker can we slap on the thing?".

Plus, "because the gods said so, it must be true" is a laughably unfounded assertion given what we know about the gods of the various D&D settings.

B) That Segev is in any way arguing for a "uptopia of undead labor" -- which is unfounded given his other statements. He's not arguing that there's no evil involved, he's arguing (and convincingly so) that the reasons that you are giving for why animating undead is evil don't stand up to examination.


Frankly, the outright refusal to even entertain a hypothetical discussion of numbers / cost-benefit / etc, makes the rest of your argument in this thread come off as less of a serious attempt to engage in discussion and more of an attempt to rhetorically browbeat those who don't agree with you.

You could start with the question I repeated a few posts ago regarding which assertion is closer to the assertion given in the books you keep citing, or your reading thereof.

[Anymage]

Let's look at the LM view through both moral utilitarianism, and through asking the question of what side effects would entail.

Moral utilitarianism, a 3.5 undead is indeed free labor*. Every undead farmer is one human who doesn't have to toil in the fields. (Probably better than that, since a skeleton doesn't need breaks for any reason.) If that human goes on to become a paladin, you have to ask the good that is created by freeing that person up to become a paladin vs. the probably harm caused by some undead popping up somewhere. You do kind of need at least rough numbers to get a good idea. And while "the gods of good have run the numbers, and have figured that it ultimately causes more harm in the long run" is an acceptable answer, in-universe characters can be curious about the numbers for themselves. Sages can try to make sense of the metaphysical underpinnings. And if the good gods actually do have decent numbers, they'd be all about letting other people run the numbers too and letting their temple libraries keep those records for any prospective necromancer who thinks that they personally can beat the system.

Side effects, assume that mass raising undead does make it much more likely that powerful undead will pop up somewhere else in the world. Sentient undead and undeath worshiping cultists likely exist. If they could advance their cause by just finding bunches of dead bodies and animating them in some remote locale, they'd likely do so. Why attract the attention of adventurers when you can weaken the veil between worlds in the privacy of their own homes?

I'm okay with wanting undead to be intrinsically evil, or at least risky enough to be a dark moral gray. And I'm okay with ideas being improved on, which is why I'm not excessively hung up on the specifics of 3.5 and LM. But if you're going to go all-in on one answer, be mindful of what ramifications it brings.



*This being one of the reasons I prefer the 5e view. There undead require the regular input of a caster of at least fifth level (not something you see all over the place), plus becoming dangerously uncontrolled if the caster is somehow unable to reassert control daily, plus being dangerous if any commoner happens to get too close. All of which are real, concrete dangers. And where it's extreme hubris to think you can perfectly control all the risks.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Let's look at the LM view through both moral utilitarianism

This is your first mistake. D&D morality is not consequentialist.

[patchyman]

Are the two sides of the thread fundamentally in disagreement? I think the “Animate Dead is Evil” crowd would agree that Alignment and Evil tends to be poorly thought out and implemented in D&D. I also think that the “Animate Dead is not inherently Evil” recognize that across several editions and many books, Animate Dead has been tagged as Evil, even if the reasoning behind it is unsatisfying.

Beyond that, it pretty much boils down to each table’s individual setting.

[Anymage]

This is your first mistake. D&D morality is not consequentialist.

I'm aware that D&D morality is a mess, and that any answer other than "it's an ad-hoc mess" will be trivial to poke holes in.

I'm also aware that some level of consequentialism is the least unsatisfying moral philosophy out there. "This thing is bad because if you do it, other bad things will happen" is a lot more acceptable (even if the causal chain happens for metaphysical reasons that don't hold water in our world) than morality by divine fiat.

I know that we'll never find a system that satisfies both the people who want Always Evil targets that they can comfortably annihilate without any moral repercussions, and the people who want a moral system with a little more depth to it. Still, given that the former don't really need much rationale beyond the Evil tag and are unlikely to look for morally complex situations to begin with, I'm okay siding with the people who want a little more moral depth in asking for better rationales.

[Brookshw]

Let's look at the LM view through both moral utilitarianism


Why? It's a crap philosophy necessitating the devaluation of the individual, and doesn't match D&D's objective morality :smallconfused:

[Segev]

Maybe it'll be clearer if I just don't address the LM position at all, and instead re-describe what I think would make a more interesting and useful way for animate dead (and, indeed, any undead-creation spell that doesn't get specifically designed to break these assumptions) an [evil] act.

Obviously, animate dead can't be so powerful as to rip a soul-complete from the afterlife, and then suppress all but its motor functions while forcing it to animate the corpse it once inhabited. Certainly not when used on corpses older than true resurrection could possibly restore to life. It would be well beyond a 4th, let alone 3rd, level spell at that point, even though the desired effect is theoretically on those levels.

It also is said, at least in 3e, to be something that even good people might cast occasionally for good reason, but that only evil people would cast it regularly. So the evil it does must be something that is theoretically justifiable at times, but which is clearly not acceptable, morally, to do regularly and for trivial convenience.

Therefore, I propose that the reason animate dead only works on corpses of once-living creatures is, in fact, due to the fact that it is "mucking about" with the soul of those who once inhabited them. However, it's not a full "yank from the afterlife and enslave." Instead, it just yanks some of the soul's essence back. A tap. A feed. A metaphysical blood siphon. This has several effects: the initial biopsy is, itself, painful; the connection from the part to the whole is never fully removed, so it can't "heal" while the undead is active; despite being in and experiencing the afterlife, the soul of the one whose corpse is animated still also gets flashes, or even constant input, from the undead senses of the skeleton or zombie made from his corpse, letting him be by default bothered and distracted and occasionally made aware at the worst moments of what his body is doing.

That last is also a further way to enhance the "evil" impact of it: powerful fiends and the like may well hone their ability to tap those senses, embracing the irritation of the pains their constituent souls endure in return for full ability to spy on the world of the living through the senses of the undead. In this way, too, low-ranking souls which are made undead become more attractive food for the more powerful fiends, marking them as more likely to be victimized and consumed so those fiends can gain access to the spying capabilities.

Now, maybe good-aligned outsiders can also benefit in this fashion, but the controls needed to restrict it to volunteers and the like mean this is going to be, if any Good do it, an LG practice, and then under extreme safety and ethics-board protocols.

Thus, the spell is, in general, [evil], and the amount of controls on it needed to mitigate that in any non-one-off circumstance would be such that it probably takes a different spell to effectively pull it off.


The fact that animate dead is causing pain and ongoing discomfort is sufficient that it's forgivable for one-off instances of great need (similar to how emergency situations can sometimes justify unkindness and discomfort being imposed on people to resolve the crisis), but doing it regularly indicates a degree of callousness towards others' suffering that is a strong indicator of evil.

[Quertus]

Is there any evidence to refute the possibility that a setting with 0 undead (etc) would have 0 spontaneous undead?

Regardless, I have no problem with the concept that "increasing undead increases spontaneous undead by a nebulous amount" means that creating undead is evil.

Does driving a car increase the chance that an innocent dies? Yes. Same with swinging a sword or shooting a gun. But the difference is, I am in control of the car or sword or gun, I am directly responsible for the consequences, and I only kill innocents through negligence. Now, when that innocent is body painted to look like the road, and I unknowingly run over them, or when the cop shoots the guy with the cell phone, well, it happens. That's why (some) laws are nuanced.

But undead? You are directly increasing the amount of Phlebotom in the universe. Period. Doesn't matter the numbers, or the numbers of the effect on the probability of evil consequences. The fact remains, with each undead, you have increased the unnatural connection to the negative energy plane by a theoretically measurable amount. Any amount is an evil act (and here is where I'll say "because reasons", but I'll accept that there could be good reasons here).

One could argue that Thanos had perfectly good intentions (and even potentially good effects), buy any amount of murder is still evil.

And that's the point. I think. I think that's what those who are saying "D&D doesn't use consequentialist morality" are trying to convey. That D&D doesn't care if you do more green than purple - or, perhaps more tellingly, more green than wet, because it doesn't matter how much green an action is when determining if it's wet. What's wet is wet.

Now, D&D just needs to do a better job explaining *why* certain things are wet.

In D&D, swinging a sword is morally neutral. Heck, even murder killing is morally neutral. It's *who* you kill that determines where the action falls between ville evil and Exalted good.

Magic is morally neutral. But animating the dead is evil. Because reasons.

[Segev]

Does driving a car increase the chance that an innocent dies? Yes. Same with swinging a sword or shooting a gun. But the difference is, I am in control of the car or sword or gun, I am directly responsible for the consequences, and I only kill innocents through negligence. Now, when that innocent is body painted to look like the road, and I unknowingly run over them, or when the cop shoots the guy with the cell phone, well, it happens. That's why (some) laws are nuanced.

Au contrare! Merely driving a car increases the traffic on the roads. Heavier traffic leads to higher chances of accidents, even though most of those drivers inducing the heavy traffic will be nowhere near the accident itself. There is no way of measuring whether you NOT driving that day would have prevented the fatal car crash 10 miles behind you on the highway or not, because of all the ripple effects of your presence on the road.

Similarly, there is no way of knowing if casting animate dead every Monday at noon is directly responsible for Suzy dying to a spontaneously-arisen wight, or that would've happened had you never cast animate dead even once.

But in both cases, we can (by assertion, in Libris Mortis's case wrt the undead) know that your action made the tragedy more likely.

[hamishspence]

In D&D, swinging a sword is morally neutral. Heck, even murder is morally neutral. It's *who* you kill that determines where the action falls between ville evil and Exalted good.
.

D&D books that mention the alignment of Murder (BoVD, FC2) specifically call it Evil. Killing is a bit more "morally neutral" - because it's context-sensitive.

"Murder" has already incorporated "context that makes it Evil".

[Asmotherion]

in both your examples the Paladin in question would fall and lose all their powers. Alignment would shift to LN.

A good character would never attempt to end a life except in self defence or if there was no other way. "That guy is Evil" is no justification with the exception of Undead/Evil Outsiders because their very existance corupts the world;

A typical Paladin will try to Save people from their own Evil or impose the Law as punishment (imprisonment for example). They may even try to find a complex ritual to cure a lycanthrope/Resurect an undead/Have a Fiend purged of evil and shift to neutral (even if it's in vain).

[Quertus]

Au contrare! Merely driving a car increases the traffic on the roads. Heavier traffic leads to higher chances of accidents, even though most of those drivers inducing the heavy traffic will be nowhere near the accident itself. There is no way of measuring whether you NOT driving that day would have prevented the fatal car crash 10 miles behind you on the highway or not, because of all the ripple effects of your presence on the road.

Similarly, there is no way of knowing if casting animate dead every Monday at noon is directly responsible for Suzy dying to a spontaneously-arisen wight, or that would've happened had you never cast animate dead even once.

But in both cases, we can (by assertion, in Libris Mortis's case wrt the undead) know that your action made the tragedy more likely.

Chaos theory says you reroll the dice, and that, by increasing traffic, you may have saved little Suzie.

But that's not my point.

My point is, you have increased foo, where foo is "traffic" or "whatever". "Traffic" is not inherently evil (even if it is detrimental and dangerous). My contention is, it *is* possible for the act of increasing the undead foo ("connection to the NEP"?) to be an inherently evil act. For whatever definition of "wet" WotC is using.


D&D books that mention the alignment of Murder (BoVD, FC2) specifically call it Evil. Killing is a bit more "morally neutral" - because it's context-sensitive.

"Murder" has already incorporated "context that makes it Evil".

Fixed, thanks!

[redwizard007]

There are some approaches in published settings.

Eberron has a couple of related cases, especially Karnath and it's undead troops:
At some point during the 100 year long Last War Karnath started to use undead troops in large numbers and in an organized fashion. Since Karnath has a rich and deep military tradition, the use of undead quickly entered and shaped military doctrine.
Now, the reasons for introducing undead to the military were far more involved and complicated then a simple/naive "makes sense" approach. Indeed, these changes were accompanied with widespread cultural changes, spearheaded by a new state religion (the Blood of Vol) that introduced pro-undead thoughts into the public.
And of course things didn't go completely smooth. For the most part, undead were not integrated into the living battalions the same way Warforged and other constructs were: even with the widespread acceptance of undead as soldiers in the general populace, the acceptance among those who had actual contact with the undead was a lot more ambigous. And while the influx of more troops and new strategic and tactical possibility definitely helped Karnath, it vilefied the nation in the eyes of the other factions.
Karnath later abolished the Blood of Vol as the state religion (even declaring it a state enemy), but the use of undead in the military was to deeply rooted that it continues to the modern day.
Modern Karnath has a very conflicted relationship to the undead: they form a vital part of their military might, but acceptance has droped. But on the other hand they are also somewhat traditional, and there are still many Karnathi that are supporters of the Blood of Vol in one way or the other.


To me the most important thing about Eberrons approach is that its main goal is to provide interessting conflict. It's not an undead utopia, it is not a clean, pristine relationship. It is difficult, nuanced, dirty, dripped in religion, betrayal, cultural upheaval, international repercussions on a political and cultural scale.

On the other hand, it is my impression that the most vocal supporters of concepts like undead labor force, at least in this forum, don't want that to be difficult. They want an utopia. That's why they typically reject things like Libris Mortis negative energy level approach and similar concepts.

Thanks for that. I never had to opportunity to get very deep into Eberron. Most of the uses I've seen proposed for undead fall into general labor, farm work, or robot-replacement, which are a pretty good stretch of the "mindless" trait. Warfare is probably the best fit I've heard, and it sounds like the setting made it nuanced enough to be interesting. I may have to dig up a source book.

[FaerieGodfather]

in both your examples the Paladin in question would fall and lose all their powers. Alignment would shift to LN.

A good character would never attempt to end a life except in self defence or if there was no other way. "That guy is Evil" is no justification with the exception of Undead/Evil Outsiders because their very existance corupts the world;

Are you arguing that Paladins cannot carry out executions in the service of lawful authorities? Because it is my impression that most "Lawful Good" governments in D&D settings absolutely do apply the axe and the noose. Can a Paladin even serve these governments at all, if they are not truly Lawful Good?

[Max_Killjoy]

Side effects, assume that mass raising undead does make it much more likely that powerful undead will pop up somewhere else in the world. Sentient undead and undeath worshiping cultists likely exist. If they could advance their cause by just finding bunches of dead bodies and animating them in some remote locale, they'd likely do so. Why attract the attention of adventurers when you can weaken the veil between worlds in the privacy of their own homes?


Indeed, one of the problems with the "raising undead makes more undead more likely" concept is that those who WANT more undead would be out mass-raising undead just for that effect alone, if makes enough of a difference for a single casting to be black-and-whiite morally evil.




I'm okay with wanting undead to be intrinsically evil, or at least risky enough to be a dark moral gray. And I'm okay with ideas being improved on, which is why I'm not excessively hung up on the specifics of 3.5 and LM. But if you're going to go all-in on one answer, be mindful of what ramifications it brings.


Being mindful of all the ramifications seems to be something a lot of gamers and worldbuilders would rather avoid at all costs.

[Segev]

Chaos theory says you reroll the dice, and that, by increasing traffic, you may have saved little Suzie.

But that's not my point.

My point is, you have increased foo, where foo is "traffic" or "whatever". "Traffic" is not inherently evil (even if it is detrimental and dangerous). My contention is, it *is* possible for the act of increasing the undead foo ("connection to the NEP"?) to be an inherently evil act. For whatever definition of "wet" WotC is using.

Which means that we're back to "It's evil because we say so," rather than, "It's evil for meaningful reasons." Hence my preference for a formulation that actually makes it evil, rather than merely making it "disapproved of by people who can write labels."

[jjordan]

I have an out-of-curiosity question for the thread:

If you joined a game and the DM stated outright:

1. In this world creation of undead is evil and Evil.
2. It has a palpable effect on the fabric of the world. Over time and repeated application of undead energy literally has an adverse effect causing such things as spontaneous undead creation, disease, natural poisons and gradual shift of alignment to 'evil' for the standard populace.
3. Although the formulas for this will not be known by you, they exist in the background. So you can never be sure of when you actually push that lever to the 'on' position with any singular spell or action you take.
4. It is conceivable that you could find a way to undo or fix damage that is done through undead energy by using opposite types of energy.

What would be your reaction?

I ask because it seems like a fundamental thread in this...er... thread... .is that the rules are too vague and unspecified. That you want them to be more solidly codified and explained.

All four points I gave above exist or have been implied by past versions of the game. But never codified.

So would your reaction be:

Yes I can play the game you describe

or

No, I refuse, that's not the way the rules work

or

No, I need you to give the specifics behind this. I need to know how many times I can cast this spell before it causes this reaction.

Yes, I can play this game. Cool worldbuilding. Way to take the basic rules and modify and build. I don't need to know the exact mechanics because you gave me the general mechanics and learning more is part of exploration of the world.

[Asmotherion]

Are you arguing that Paladins cannot carry out executions in the service of lawful authorities? Because it is my impression that most "Lawful Good" governments in D&D settings absolutely do apply the axe and the noose. Can a Paladin even serve these governments at all, if they are not truly Lawful Good?

Depends:

if the executed-to-be received a fair trial and the punishment fits the crime he would; Not eagerly but if ordered to do so he would have to abide.

As a rule of thumb i'd say execution because of theft/ending a life in self defance/not abiding by the State's Authority would be a strict NO from the Paladin wile execution for mass murder or war crimes would be a yes if he was ordered to do it (but would rather have someone else do the execution as he gets no pleasure from ending lives).

[Koo Rehtorb]

in both your examples the Paladin in question would fall and lose all their powers. Alignment would shift to LN.

A good character would never attempt to end a life except in self defence or if there was no other way. "That guy is Evil" is no justification with the exception of Undead/Evil Outsiders because their very existance corupts the world;

A typical Paladin will try to Save people from their own Evil or impose the Law as punishment (imprisonment for example). They may even try to find a complex ritual to cure a lycanthrope/Resurect an undead/Have a Fiend purged of evil and shift to neutral (even if it's in vain).

Nah. Paladins are entirely empowered to be judge jury and executioner. They don't answer to mortal law, but to their divine authority, although a nation in which those two things are compatible is ideal. The caveat is that if a paladin goes around executing people that don't deserve to be executed then he falls for it. And being evil isn't, in and of itself, sufficient cause to execute someone.

[Fable Wright]

Bold is the big difference between disease and undeath, and your big mistake. They pop up everywhere, there is no clear "source."

This is different from diseases... how? The source of the problems that the undead causes is the vampire making spawn, the ghast making ghouls, etc.



Check any encounter table. Dungeon? Undead. Temperate Forest? Undead. Marshes? Undead. Hills, Mountains, Deserts, Plains, Urban, Wilderness? Check, check, check, check.

Dungeon? As bad as a city, not counting supernatural plagues.
Forest? Rabies, blood borne diseases from ticks, check.
Marshes? By the Sovereign Host, yes.
Hills, Mountains, Deserts, Plains, Urban, Wilderness? Check, check, check, check.



By contrast, a cityborne plague doesn't have a random planewide point of origin; it would have to start in (or be brought to) that city. And cities can therefore take reasonable precautions against that. Which they do - forbidding travel from ridden areas, building hospitals and churches, quarantining districts, sealing off trade.


Quarantine does nothing to cholera or the Plague. Forbidding travel does nothing to eliminate mosquito bites. Without knowing transmission vectors, you're stabbing in the dark, every moment of testing causing horrific death.



They can do none of that against undead in the wilderness or countryside where innocents live and their food comes from; their best bet is to dispatch guardsmen, and pray that whatever popped up isn't something they need heroes to deal with instead, like a Greater Shadow.

They can set up cordons; mark safe paths; consecrate ground; build defenses; and hire adventurers. It's no worse a problem than any other dangerous monster den. Easier in some ways due to supernatural weaknesses.



Lastly, I said supernatural world for a reason. Pretty sure the Black Death was missing a bunch of conveniences that D&D settings have; no paladins and monks, no adepts or clerics, no Periapt of Health, no Purify Food and Drink, no Remove Disease, no Lesser Restoration...

None of those come close to vaccines.

A hospital can cure people with good reliability... in small numbers, like adepts or clerics. We can purify food and drink... but not to the extent that every well is cleansed, much like in D&D. Periapt of health is so ludicrously expensive only the very few and very rich can afford it.

And absolutely nothing you mentioned takes immunity to reinfection, which weathering the disease grants.

In the modern world, we have all the technology that you describe, and vast amounts of statistics to act as preventative measures. And a single vial of smallpox or ebola released in a major urban center remains the stuff of nightmares. "Everybody dies" nightmares. In D&D, all it takes is one evil priest casting Contagion, and we get another Spanish Flu, Ebola, Black Death, or Smallpox on our hands. Anywhere at any time.

Undead are scary. Epidemics are the deadliest thing in all of human history, and second only to nuclear war in terms of threats that can permanently wipe us off the planet. Do not underestimate them.

[Quertus]

Which means that we're back to "It's evil because we say so," rather than, "It's evil for meaningful reasons." Hence my preference for a formulation that actually makes it evil, rather than merely making it "disapproved of by people who can write labels."

Yes and no. As I said (poorly, admittedly), *to my understanding*, it's "because I said so" / "because reasons". But my point is, there *could be* valid reasons. Like, if was murder, you'd readily agree that increasing the number of murders was evil, right? Or, at least, could be called evil by some moral systems?

All I'm saying is, it is arguable that "increasing foo" (where foo may be "the connection to the NEP") is an inherently evil act, for some morality system.

[Anymage]

Depends:

if the executed-to-be received a fair trial and the punishment fits the crime he would; Not eagerly but if ordered to do so he would have to abide.

As a rule of thumb i'd say execution because of theft/ending a life in self defance/not abiding by the State's Authority would be a strict NO from the Paladin wile execution for mass murder or war crimes would be a yes if he was ordered to do it (but would rather have someone else do the execution as he gets no pleasure from ending lives).

Paladins have good weapon and armor proficiencies, a strong hit dice, and good BAB. They may be CHA powered and have diplomacy on their skill list, but they're at least as much about thwacking evil as they are about talking nicely to people.

Exactly how they act is campaign dependent. A DM who wants the characters to live up to superman morality will have to meet the players halfway by making the rest of the world play along. The baddies gloat and then attack so that the PCs have no choice but to be awesomely violent. Alternately, a DM who wants to have the whole world in grimy shades of gray might understand that the paladin will ambush slavers who sell children to mind flayers because that's the best way to save their cargo. Regardless, you don't play a paladin to sit on the sidelines and wring your hands.


In the modern world, we have all the technology that you describe, and vast amounts of statistics to act as preventative measures. And a single vial of smallpox or ebola released in a major urban center remains the stuff of nightmares. "Everybody dies" nightmares. In D&D, all it takes is one evil priest casting Contagion, and we get another Spanish Flu, Ebola, Black Death, or Smallpox on our hands. Anywhere at any time.

Undead are scary. Epidemics are the deadliest thing in all of human history, and second only to nuclear war in terms of threats that can permanently wipe us off the planet. Do not underestimate them.

Diseases in real life, especially before modern medicine really started to come together, can be scarier than any but the most apocalyptic undead invasion in D&D. Not going to disagree with that.

Diseases in D&D are usually a lot easier to contain. Partially because the devs didn't want disease to be too much of an impediment to adventuring, partially because there wasn't much point to making in depth rules for contagion simulation. So diseases in D&D only get to approach the threat of diseases in real life with a heavy helping of DM fiat.

[Segev]

Yes and no. As I said (poorly, admittedly), *to my understanding*, it's "because I said so" / "because reasons". But my point is, there *could be* valid reasons. Like, if was murder, you'd readily agree that increasing the number of murders was evil, right? Or, at least, could be called evil by some moral systems?

All I'm saying is, it is arguable that "increasing foo" (where foo may be "the connection to the NEP") is an inherently evil act, for some morality system.

Unless you can show that it is worse to increase foo than to increase bar, you can't say increasing foo is evil without also saying increasing bar is evil.

And, again, because it always seems to be forgotten when I don't mention it (and sometimes even when I do), I'm not trying to argue that animate dead shouldn't have the [evil] tag. I'm saying this particular explanation for it is inadequate.

[Max_Killjoy]

And, again, because it always seems to be forgotten when I don't mention it (and sometimes even when I do), I'm not trying to argue that animate dead shouldn't have the [evil] tag. I'm saying this particular explanation for it is inadequate.


Heck, I've been trying to point that part out about your stance, and it just doesn't seem to take.

Both of us have been far more focused on the fact that the argument/explanation is inadequate, than we have been on whether it's evil / "Evil" or not. But every page or two, someone will act like we're arguing something we're not... I guess people assume that if we're attacking the argument we must be attacking the conclusion or position that argument is being used to prop up.

[redwizard007]

Heck, I've been trying to point that part out about your stance, and it just doesn't seem to take.

Both of us have been far more focused on the fact that the argument/explanation is inadequate, than we have been on whether it's evil / "Evil" or not. But every page or two, someone will act like we're arguing something we're not... I guess people assume that if we're attacking the argument we must be attacking the conclusion or position that argument is being used to prop up.

I don't think anyone would argue that the reasons given for Animate Dead's [Evil] tag is a bit weak. Just that it's no weaker than any other arbitrary decision made by designers. Why did monks need to be Lawful? Why must sorcerers have less HP than clerics? Why couldn't barbarians be lawful even though Salvatore always had battlerager dwarves? A decision was made. House rule it away or accept it.

[Quertus]

Unless you can show that it is worse to increase foo than to increase bar, you can't say increasing foo is evil without also saying increasing bar is evil.

And, again, because it always seems to be forgotten when I don't mention it (and sometimes even when I do), I'm not trying to argue that animate dead shouldn't have the [evil] tag. I'm saying this particular explanation for it is inadequate.

OK, let me try a different angle, then: *why* is anything evil? I think (not an intentional strawman, correct me if I'm wrong) that, like most people, you are equating "evil" with "harmful" or some such. But what if evil doesn't work that way? What if, in some imagined morality system, "evil" was something defined by first principles. Add connection to NEP? Evil. Kill someone with the "good" tag? Evil. Whatever.

So, if "adding to NEP connection" is evil, then the comparison isn't "something more evil" (whatever that means), but "something that causes more connection to the NEP". And, yes, if something causes more connection to the NEP, but isn't called out as "evil", then it's a flaw in the moral system.

But, so long as murder doesn't add to the connection to the NEP, this hypothetical morality system is perfectly within its rights to claim that creating undead is evil, but murder isn't.

[PhoenixPhyre]

OK, let me try a different angle, then: *why* is anything evil? I think (not an intentional strawman, correct me if I'm wrong) that, like most people, you are equating "evil" with "harmful" or some such. But what if evil doesn't work that way? What if, in some imagined morality system, "evil" was something defined by first principles. Add connection to NEP? Evil. Kill someone with the "good" tag? Evil. Whatever.

So, if "adding to NEP connection" is evil, then the comparison isn't "something more evil" (whatever that means), but "something that causes more connection to the NEP". And, yes, if something causes more connection to the NEP, but isn't called out as "evil", then it's a flaw in the moral system.

But, so long as murder doesn't add to the connection to the NEP, this hypothetical morality system is perfectly within its rights to claim that creating undead is evil, but murder isn't.

This is the key thing. D&D morality is deontological. Based on first principles, not on the consequences of the actions. Whether or not that's the working law of this universe, it's the working law of the D&D one. From this perspective, much of the "well, does it do more good than harm?" questions are just moot. They're irrelevant. The only question is "does it violate one of the first principles of D&D morality? And here, the creation of undead very much does. Because the people responsible for setting those first principles said so, if for no other reason. You can dislike these first principles, but you cannot deny that these are the underlying principles. And there's no consistency requirement. A perfectly cromulent set of first principles might condemn the color pink based on some strange (to us) principle. But if that is the underlying moral principle in a world where good and evil are objective moral absolutes, it's the undeniable truth.

[Max_Killjoy]

This is the key thing. D&D morality is deontological. Based on first principles, not on the consequences of the actions. Whether or not that's the working law of this universe, it's the working law of the D&D one. From this perspective, much of the "well, does it do more good than harm?" questions are just moot. They're irrelevant. The only question is "does it violate one of the first principles of D&D morality? And here, the creation of undead very much does. Because the people responsible for setting those first principles said so, if for no other reason. You can dislike these first principles, but you cannot deny that these are the underlying principles. And there's no consistency requirement. A perfectly cromulent set of first principles might condemn the color pink based on some strange (to us) principle. But if that is the underlying moral principle in a world where good and evil are objective moral absolutes, it's the undeniable truth.

Excuse me while I don't care, and go back to actually discussing the moral assertions as moral assertions, and ignore "because I said so" as any form of legitimate argument.

I don't accept morality-by-fiat in the real world, what makes you think I'd accept it from a freaking game setting?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Excuse me while I don't care, and go back to actually discussing the moral assertions as moral assertions, and ignore "because I said so" as any form of legitimate argument.

I don't accept morality-by-fiat in the real world, what makes you think I'd accept it from a freaking game setting?

All you're saying is that you don't agree with deontology. Which is fine. It's a matter of substantial debate in the ethical world. But dismissing it as "morality by fiat" is totally blinkered and arrogant. You can say "I don't like it", but that does not make it flawed or bad.

Things Max_Killjoy doesn't like =/= things that are bad.

I totally agree that 3e's version of the moral/ethical system is unsatisfying. But so is this line of attacks. It's nothing more than a disguised argument based on taste.

[Lord Raziere]

My main problem with deontology as a philosophy is while its great for describing morality for most of the moral decisions people will make in normal every day lives (don't steal, don't murder etc. etc.) it is like the philosophical equivalent of newtonian physics and falls apart when you try to use it in more extreme or dangerous circumstances that you don't encounter as much. problem is, DnD's world is nothing but those extreme circumstances made manifest.

[Quertus]

Excuse me while I don't care, and go back to actually discussing the moral assertions as moral assertions, and ignore "because I said so" as any form of legitimate argument.

I don't accept morality-by-fiat in the real world, what makes you think I'd accept it from a freaking game setting?

But… moral judgements have to have reasons, don't they? They have to stem from some first principles, don't they?

So, the question is, is it valid for different realities to have different moral systems with different first principles? Why is it invalid for D&D to claim that (in their world, in their (broken) morality system) one of their first principles is "adds to the connection to the NEP is evil"?

[Max_Killjoy]

All you're saying is that you don't agree with deontology. Which is fine. It's a matter of substantial debate in the ethical world. But dismissing it as "morality by fiat" is totally blinkered and arrogant. You can say "I don't like it", but that does not make it flawed or bad.

Things Max_Killjoy doesn't like =/= things that are bad.

I totally agree that 3e's version of the moral/ethical system is unsatisfying. But so is this line of attacks. It's nothing more than a disguised argument based on taste.


D&D doesn't even do dermatology, it tries to come up with reasoning for why things are wrong, but inevitably botches the attempt, teetering between "because the gods said so" (fiat) and "because of X reason" that is really only applied to the thing they're trying to slap a "wrong" tag on at that particular moment and never more broadly considered. See, this entire thread.

Of course, the very idea that an action can be right or wrong without any regard to its intent or its effect... it so much hot garbage, an ethical dumpster fire. And that is not a matter of taste. It's trivially easy to present a situation in which the intent was good, the outcome was entirely positive, and yet by some deontological standard, the action was "immoral".



But… moral judgements have to have reasons, don't they? They have to stem from some first principles, don't they?

So, the question is, is it valid for different realities to have different moral systems with different first principles? Why is it invalid for D&D to claim that (in their world, in their (broken) morality system) one of their first principles is "adds to the connection to the NEP is evil"?

Deontology... doesn't really have any "stemming", it's just a set of rules.

"It is an ethical framework that depends on the predefined sets of rules and policies for the proper functioning of a system in the environment. The deontology is simply based on the checklist which includes certain rules to be followed while performing a particular task. According to this framework, the work is considered virtuous only if this checklist is completed. This procedure is very simple to implement and understand. Minimum time is consumed to decide between right and wrong. However, its simplicity ignores the consequences of the decision taken under this approach."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics


But no, it's not possible for a different reality to have a different moral system. It can have a set of baked-in ersatz "moral" rules that go so far as to be "cosmic forces", and even use moral terminology to describe those rules, but that's it -- see the distinction made in these thread between D&D "Evil" and actual evil, for example.




My main problem with deontology as a philosophy is while its great for describing morality for most of the moral decisions people will make in normal every day lives (don't steal, don't murder etc. etc.) it is like the philosophical equivalent of newtonian physics and falls apart when you try to use it in more extreme or dangerous circumstances that you don't encounter as much. problem is, DnD's world is nothing but those extreme circumstances made manifest.


I see the ill effect of "checklist ethics" every day in one of the departments in the company I work for.

They don't care if they actually solve a problem, so long as they went down their checklist they "did their job" and "did the right thing".

[Psyren]

Though I don't have a horse in this race, I don't think you're properly representing Psyren's point as concerns the 3.5 fluff/weakening the veil/whatever. Driving a car may cause more car accidents, but the ratio of car accidents vs. cars on the road doesn't change just because more people are driving cars*. In contrast by Psyren's position, the more undead are created the more the ratio of undead....manifestation(?) shifts. You're talking volume, he's talking ratios. At least that's my take away.

*There's probably something to be said for more cars = heavy traffic which would have an adverse effect on the ratio of car accidents. From a cursory review, it looks like data is primarily tracked by volume and not percentage so I don't know if there's a solid correlation to be drawn. Heck, higher volume might result in more careful driving. I don't know.

Correct - and thank you for continuing to point out reasons this analogy (like the rest) fails.


I don't think anyone would argue that the reasons given for Animate Dead's [Evil] tag is a bit weak. Just that it's no weaker than any other arbitrary decision made by designers. Why did monks need to be Lawful? Why must sorcerers have less HP than clerics? Why couldn't barbarians be lawful even though Salvatore always had battlerager dwarves? A decision was made. House rule it away or accept it.

This is ultimately the takeaway.


There are some approaches in published settings.

Eberron has a couple of related cases, especially Karnath and it's undead troops:
At some point during the 100 year long Last War Karnath started to use undead troops in large numbers and in an organized fashion. Since Karnath has a rich and deep military tradition, the use of undead quickly entered and shaped military doctrine.
Now, the reasons for introducing undead to the military were far more involved and complicated then a simple/naive "makes sense" approach. Indeed, these changes were accompanied with widespread cultural changes, spearheaded by a new state religion (the Blood of Vol) that introduced pro-undead thoughts into the public.
And of course things didn't go completely smooth. For the most part, undead were not integrated into the living battalions the same way Warforged and other constructs were: even with the widespread acceptance of undead as soldiers in the general populace, the acceptance among those who had actual contact with the undead was a lot more ambigous. And while the influx of more troops and new strategic and tactical possibility definitely helped Karnath, it vilefied the nation in the eyes of the other factions.
Karnath later abolished the Blood of Vol as the state religion (even declaring it a state enemy), but the use of undead in the military was to deeply rooted that it continues to the modern day.
Modern Karnath has a very conflicted relationship to the undead: they form a vital part of their military might, but acceptance has droped. But on the other hand they are also somewhat traditional, and there are still many Karnathi that are supporters of the Blood of Vol in one way or the other.


To me the most important thing about Eberrons approach is that its main goal is to provide interessting conflict. It's not an undead utopia, it is not a clean, pristine relationship. It is difficult, nuanced, dirty, dripped in religion, betrayal, cultural upheaval, international repercussions on a political and cultural scale.

On the other hand, it is my impression that the most vocal supporters of concepts like undead labor force, at least in this forum, don't want that to be difficult. They want an utopia. That's why they typically reject things like Libris Mortis negative energy level approach and similar concepts.

This, and it's the same with Geb. The intentions of the folks trying it may be good, but ultimately it does not end up being post-labor utopia, nor even that much better than nations not doing it.


All you're saying is that you don't agree with deontology. Which is fine. It's a matter of substantial debate in the ethical world. But dismissing it as "morality by fiat" is totally blinkered and arrogant. You can say "I don't like it", but that does not make it flawed or bad.

Things Max_Killjoy doesn't like =/= things that are bad.

To quote something I read once, "insert vigorous clapping gif here."

[Max_Killjoy]

Correct - and thank you for continuing to point out reasons this analogy (like the rest) fails.


Well, there's a likely source of disconnect... it's not an analogy in the first place.

It's someone applying the same reasoning by which the "Evil" tag is being assigned to Animate Dead, and applying it to other things to see what results.




To quote something I read once, "insert vigorous clapping gif here."


You have a low bar for that level of approval, if you're going to give it to PP's kneejerk fallback argument for whenever he disagrees with me. I've lost count of the number of times I've been accused of "confusing opinion for fact" regarding things that aren't matters of opinion in the first place.




I don't think anyone would argue that the reasons given for Animate Dead's [Evil] tag is a bit weak. Just that it's no weaker than any other arbitrary decision made by designers. Why did monks need to be Lawful? Why must sorcerers have less HP than clerics? Why couldn't barbarians be lawful even though Salvatore always had battlerager dwarves? A decision was made. House rule it away or accept it.


That looks like less an argument for accepting the "evil tag" as just "part of the game", and more an indictment of the overall system as a collection of arbitrary decisions.

[Lord Raziere]

I see the ill effect of "checklist ethics" every day in one of the departments in the company I work for.

They don't care if they actually solve a problem, so long as they went down their checklist they "did their job" and "did the right thing".

Huh.

I stand corrected then. I was more talking in more a general basic moral guidelines sense, but even those have consequentialist reasons behind them that make sense.

[Anymage]

Something ironic here is that both 5e and 4e give better reasons why good characters would find undead distasteful, without the arbitrariness of 3.x core "because that's what the gods say" or the clunkiness of LM's "it increases the chance of some unread spontaneously arising somewhere else". When 4e fluff does better despite the fact that PC types can't cast Animate Dead in that edition, it's noteworthy.

Which does leave me curious why people are so adamant about defending 3.5 content when the devs have shown that they're open to different ideas that don't lean into pure authorial fiat so heavily.

[Max_Killjoy]

Huh.

I stand corrected then. I was more talking in more a general basic moral guidelines sense, but even those have consequentialist reasons behind them that make sense.

Sorry if it came across as a "correction", wasn't meant that way, just an illustration of the problem. They "do the right thing" but clearly don't do anyone any good.

Another issue is that no set of rules is perfect in scope and scale. Eventually, one comes across a situation in which the rules conflict with each other, or don't cover an exact situation, and then one must apply their own judgement (and even refusing to act is a choice, so no getting out that way). Deontology is a fool's errand -- there is no way to have a moral system that doesn't eventually come down to trying to do one's best to apply existing principles to a novel situation.

What's funny is that this has been used here as an argument against a sim-leaning approach to gaming and in favor of "rulings, not rules" to cover an expansive set of situations, and yet are evidently it's less of an issue to entertain a moral system that simply relies entirely on a list of just-so rules (that are often less thoughtfully constructed than some game systems).



Something ironic here is that both 5e and 4e give better reasons why good characters would find undead distasteful, without the arbitrariness of 3.x core "because that's what the gods say" or the clunkiness of LM's "it increases the chance of some unread spontaneously arising somewhere else". When 4e fluff does better despite the fact that PC types can't cast Animate Dead in that edition, it's noteworthy.

Which does leave me curious why people are so adamant about defending 3.5 content when the devs have shown that they're open to different ideas that don't lean into pure authorial fiat so heavily.

What reasoning does 4e give?

[redwizard007]

That looks like less an argument for accepting the "evil tag" as just "part of the game", and more an indictment of the overall system as a collection of arbitrary decisions.

You can certainly take it that way. I just don't see any point to picking at one specific rule based on an alignment system that is obviously a child's version of morality. I accept that it is fact, just as magic and dragons are facts in these games. Neither of those hold up to modern logic either, but I won't allow that to detract from my enjoyment of the game. If I sit down at a table that wants to use a more nuanced worldview I'm open to that as well, but it certainly isn't the default.

[Psyren]

Well, there's a likely source of disconnect... it's not an analogy in the first place.

It's someone applying the same reasoning by which the "Evil" tag is being assigned to Animate Dead, and applying it to other things to see what results.

Either way, undead aren't cars (for numerous, numerous reasons already stated) so the reasoning, analogy, whatever you care to call it fails.


Something ironic here is that both 5e and 4e give better reasons why good characters would find undead distasteful, without the arbitrariness of 3.x core "because that's what the gods say" or the clunkiness of LM's "it increases the chance of some unread spontaneously arising somewhere else". When 4e fluff does better despite the fact that PC types can't cast Animate Dead in that edition, it's noteworthy.

Which does leave me curious why people are so adamant about defending 3.5 content when the devs have shown that they're open to different ideas that don't lean into pure authorial fiat so heavily.

5e is just as declarative - "it's not good, and only evil characters do this frequently."

Not familiar enough with 4e to know what you're referring to there.

[Anymage]

What reasoning does 4e give?

All undead, at least to the definition of "all" that includes "all demons are CE", are under the dominion of Orcus.

Adding a bit of extrapolation, since 4e didn't feel the need to cover too many details:
Orcus can pull the plug on any undead who gets too irksome. A lich might develop a conscience against all the odds, but if it foils too many dark plots Orcus can decide that it isn't worth keeping around. Sentient undead have to stay on a demon lord's good side, which tends to mean you won't find many Good ones.

Orcus can commandeer control over any undead. Maybe just nonsentient ones, maybe any. This means that unless your city happens to be a bunch of Orcus worshipers (who tend to be nasty by nature), those undead you're counting on for important functions can abandon those posts and to kill crazy at the drop of a hat. If you're a Good society that tries this, expect Orcus to pull the trigger when it'll cause maximum carnage.

A Good character might be able to pull off Animating a handful of corpses in time of extreme need. A demon lord needs to focus on his schemes and could very easily be busy at that exact moment, and Orcus is probably bright enough to not corrupt every casting of Animate Dead even if he could mind all of them. Good characters who get into the habit of Animating open themselves to certain lines of temptation, and Good societies that get into the habit of Animating open themselves up to much greater potential damage if they get complacent.
So just with "you're channeling evil energies from Orcus, and he can start using these as he sees fit" and a little extrapolation, you get a spell that makes Good characters uncomfortable and many Evil ones happy, all without needing to create special cases for moral or natural law.


5e is just as declarative - "it's not good, and only evil characters do this frequently."

Except for the part where it's a lot harder to control a bunch of undead. (Control needs to be reestablished daily instead of persisting indefinitely.) And the fact that undead are explicitly called out as malicious and inimical to life, and will happily go kill crazy if control slips. And that by the fluff, even a controlled undead might nom an innocent passerby if a living person gets too close and the caster isn't there to constantly babysit it.

[Psyren]

That's hilarious. Does he have to be present, or can he do it from anywhere? If the latter, that's worse than anything in 3e or 5e, not that the former is much better.

Though I guess "kill Orcus to free all undead from his thrall" is a campaign idea.

[Lord Raziere]

Sorry if it came across as a "correction", wasn't meant that way, just an illustration of the problem. They "do the right thing" but clearly don't do anyone any good.

Another issue is that no set of rules is perfect in scope and scale. Eventually, one comes across a situation in which the rules conflict with each other, or don't cover an exact situation, and then one must apply their own judgement (and even refusing to act is a choice, so no getting out that way). Deontology is a fool's errand -- there is no way to have a moral system that doesn't eventually come down to trying to do one's best to apply existing principles to a novel situation.

What's funny is that this has been used here as an argument against a sim-leaning approach to gaming and in favor of "rulings, not rules" to cover an expansive set of situations, and yet are evidently it's less of an issue to entertain a moral system that simply relies entirely on a list of just-so rules (that are often less thoughtfully constructed than some game systems).


Agreed, honestly. I've also found that trying to applying rules to everything is fruitless, sure society does a lot to try and apply rules to anything but thats more an ethics thing than a morality thing. I find morality depends on your own judgement while ethics depends on what we agree upon as a society, and whats ethically fair doesn't always translate to whats morally right. (for example just because the ethics of a society say its fair to settle things with a duel to the death, doesn't mean the duel to the death is morally right. it just means that if you do that, no one is going to get punished over it.)

personally whenever I think of the DnD world, alignment is one the first things I throw out, or at least, relegate to relative non-importance. Now I still keep some semblance good people being good and such, but I don't really define any of it. for example, Tieflings. they work just fine without alignment. heck, they work better without it, because while demons are clearly bad, that doesn't mean they aren't a part of what makes people, people. like, what if angels are just personifications of the Superego and demons are the just the personifications of Id? so, fighting demons is just metaphorically reining in the base impulses of people and while angels are right, they don't enjoy life so you can't listen to everything they say so you can enjoy life as well. makes more sense to me at least than the whole alignment thing.

[Quertus]

Of course, the very idea that an action can be right or wrong without any regard to its intent or its effect... it so much hot garbage, an ethical dumpster fire. And that is not a matter of taste. It's trivially easy to present a situation in which the intent was good, the outcome was entirely positive, and yet by some deontological standard, the action was "immoral".

Deontology... doesn't really have any "stemming", it's just a set of rules.

"It is an ethical framework that depends on the predefined sets of rules and policies for the proper functioning of a system in the environment. The deontology is simply based on the checklist which includes certain rules to be followed while performing a particular task. According to this framework, the work is considered virtuous only if this checklist is completed. This procedure is very simple to implement and understand. Minimum time is consumed to decide between right and wrong. However, its simplicity ignores the consequences of the decision taken under this approach."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics


But no, it's not possible for a different reality to have a different moral system. It can have a set of baked-in ersatz "moral" rules that go so far as to be "cosmic forces", and even use moral terminology to describe those rules, but that's it -- see the distinction made in these thread between D&D "Evil" and actual evil, for example.

I see the ill effect of "checklist ethics" every day in one of the departments in the company I work for.

They don't care if they actually solve a problem, so long as they went down their checklist they "did their job" and "did the right thing".

So… then maybe I'm not talking about Deontology?

It's been a long time since I took, uh, whichever philosophy class covered such things, but I recall Utilitarian ethics being based on munchkins trying to go around min-maxing happiness, and Kantian ethics being based on "you do you".

They were based on first principles of "happiness" and "consent". Sounds like your "intent and effect" to me. Do you disagree?

Now, imagine a race that derives great pleasure from murder. Illithids make a good example, with their "performance eating". It is possible to set up society such that they pass Utilitarian ethics, but what about consent? Well, my Illithid Savant has that covered - he ate a Thrullherder, so lots of volunteers show up every day - suicidal beings who want to die for the greater good.

Or the meals could in principle consent, by continuing to live in a society where Illithids carry out capital punishment.

So, which is it? Is Illithid brain-eating evil because it follows some principles (like utilitarianism or Kantian ethics), which we can game to make it not evil, or is it its own first principles evil? Or is it not evil at all (everything's gotta eat)? Or some other option I haven't considered?

In short, if there are universal rules for right and wrong, that cannot change between settings, then I am attempting to divine what you consider those rules to be, and apply them to the question at hand.

If morality is universal, then if "increasing the connection to NEP" isn't inherently evil in D&D, it wouldn't be evil in this world, either. So, if it were possible, would it be evil to do so in this world? Why or why not?

What kind of answers would the developers have to give to satisfy you regarding the morality of action?

(Or do you go all-in on something like utilitarianism, and say that it's not possible to do evil for the greater good, because anything that improves the greater good is inherently good? It doesn't matter how many puppies you have to kick, if your intention and effect are to create a better world, your actions are good?)


This, and it's the same with Geb. The intentions of the folks trying it may be good, but ultimately it does not end up being post-labor utopia, nor even that much better than nations not doing it.

So, it does end up better than the nations not doing it? Cool. Because my Necromancy-fueled societies certainly did.

[NNescio]

Except for the part where it's a lot harder to control a bunch of undead. (Control needs to be reestablished daily instead of persisting indefinitely.) And the fact that undead are explicitly called out as malicious and inimical to life, and will happily go kill crazy if control slips. And that by the fluff, even a controlled undead might nom an innocent passerby if a living person gets too close and the caster isn't there to constantly babysit it.

Well, one could use Finger of Death for permanently-controlled undead (only zombies though), then seal them up in a personal Demiplane for later use. That said this... quote-unquote "responsible" method of necromancy requires high levels to utilize, so it's out of reach of most necromancers (lower-case or otherwise).

(And farming zombies this way still seems kinda morally dubious anyway [to me], even if the humanoids are slated for death, like if the necromancer is a state-sanctioned executioner or something.)

[Max_Killjoy]

Either way, undead aren't cars (for numerous, numerous reasons already stated) so the reasoning, analogy, whatever you care to call it fails.


To tell whether the risks involved are "like cars", or "like diamonds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_diamond)", or like something else, we'd need someone to answer the questions about specifics, instead of steadfastly refusing to answer.

See, for one, this previously posted question:




Indeed, there's a HUGE difference between:

A) There are normally 100 undead arising spontaneously in the world each year. Every time you cast Animate Dead, there's a 0.1% chance that 1 more undead will arise spontaneously in the next year.

B) There are normally zero undead arising spontaneously in the world each year. Every time you cast Animate Dead, another undead creature will with certainty arise at a random location somewhere in the world.

Which is the "Bad Latin Book of Undeath" closer to?







5e is just as declarative - "it's not good, and only evil characters do this frequently."


As Anymage lays out, 5e gives an actual explanation of the direct risks involved -- and they're not vague unspecified notions of something that might happen sometime somewhere if you cast the spell.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Except for the part where it's a lot harder to control a bunch of undead. (Control needs to be reestablished daily instead of persisting indefinitely.) And the fact that undead are explicitly called out as malicious and inimical to life, and will happily go kill crazy if control slips. And that by the fluff, even a controlled undead might nom an innocent passerby if a living person gets too close and the caster isn't there to constantly babysit it.

Yeah. 5e does away with the "basic undead are mindless robots" idea. Instead, they lack personality and memory, but retain a single-minded drive to murder anything they come across. In fact, zombies (based on the MM fluff) cannot be ordered to do more than throw themselves at a living target and murder it. Skeletons are "smarter" (capable of following more complex orders and using weapons), but still default to "kill all living things". Animate dead is the equivalent of mind-controlling a bunch of brain-wiped (other than the urge to kill) serial killers and putting them on thin leashes. Plus the fact that control limits are way lower in 5e and the control has to be re-asserted every 24 hours by physical proximity (range: touch)[1]

And the rest of the undead[2] are described as being either the result of evil people getting their just results or as being dependent on consuming living souls for food (e.g. liches). All of them are described as being animated by "foul magics" or "unclean spirits" or in other such terms. They spontaneously arise in areas with heavy death and pain and other "evil" influences, including magics like animating dead.

All together, 5e makes a good case as to why only evil people will regularly cast animate dead or create undead. They carry strong, relevant risks and involve wading into filthy magical waters. On the other hand, 5e does not categorize actions (in general) as good/neutral/evil. People have alignments that indicate their default approach (when not overridden by other factors). That is, creating undead as your normal approach to things is a sign that you best fit one of the evil alignment descriptors. There's no "universal account" with debits or credits; you can't "balance bad actions with good actions" anymore than you can balance a murder by planting some trees.

[1] And unlike 3e, there's no way to re-establish control over a formerly-controlled undead. Once control lapses, they're wild. And for low-level people, you can't really control very many, and you have to be close to them (60 feet) to give orders, and touch range to re-assert control. You can't even pass off control--only the caster can give them orders, at least if they're expected to obey. Tricks like "obey that guy" or other complex delegation orders don't work. You get one simple command at a time, and it does that and nothing else. Personally, I'd rule that anything involving conditionals or decisions is too complex.

[2] I'm AFB, but other than ghosts (who are called out as specific exceptions), all the other undead are nasty customers. Souls so corrupt they collapse on themselves, creatures who subsist on the souls of others, beings so filled with hate that their only goal is to break and destroy, etc.

[Psyren]

So, it does end up better than the nations not doing it? Cool. Because my Necromancy-fueled societies certainly did.

It's not. Geb is far from the most prosperous nation and the quality of life for its living citizens (especially the ones who aren't necromancers) is pretty poor. Living citizens and visitors alike give up a lot of rights just for being there, and while they make a token effort at policing their more ravenous denizens, outright murder is pretty common there. They're able to produce and trade surplus food but they are not self-sufficient by any stretch.


To tell whether the risks involved are "like cars", or "like diamonds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_diamond)", or like something else, we'd need someone to answer the questions about specifics, instead of steadfastly refusing to answer.

See, for one, this previously posted question:





I actually didn't see your question. Not sure if you noticed but the thread is moving pretty fast and several people (myself included) are posting novels on top of that.

As the only planes that appear to be free of spontaneous undead appear to be the upper planes and the PEP, I'd say there is a baseline level of undead spawning that routine reanimation can make worse. How much worse? Enough that the act is considered to be evil (but not necessarily as heinous as murder for example.)



As Anymage lays out, 5e gives an actual explanation of the direct risks involved -- and they're not vague unspecified notions of something that might happen sometime somewhere if you cast the spell.

I'm not seeing any difference between 5e and LM in that regard. "Mindless undead default to destroying life" is true in both editions.

[druid91]

It's not - you're just unlucky. I'd also wonder what age group you typically play with, because resorting instantly to PvP over looting a corpse doesn't seem particularly mature.

I mean, I had that very thing derail a campaign once among players who were all late twenties early thirties.

New guy made a Grave Cleric who hated the defiling of corpses, but for some reason the group has a long running obsession with grisly trophies.

Trophy collecting ensued. Grave Cleric and Rogue duked it out. Cleric died but the Rogue was so banged up he died in the next encounter.

This started a back and forth revenge cycle between the two players.

[Quertus]

Indeed, there's a HUGE difference between:

A) There are normally 100 undead arising spontaneously in the world each year. Every time you cast Animate Dead, there's a 0.1% chance that 1 more undead will arise spontaneously in the next year.

B) There are normally zero undead arising spontaneously in the world each year. Every time you cast Animate Dead, another undead creature will with certainty arise at a random location somewhere in the world.

There is indeed a difference. If my math is correct, that difference is (on average) .999 undead.

If either is evil, both are evil, unless evil is measured in degrees.

If firing a shot off into a crowd only has a .1% chance if killing someone, does that make that not evil, while pulling the switch that had a higher probability of killing someone is?

It sounds like you are either using some sort of "threshold" morality (I'm just making up names here, doubtless someone will correct me), where you must do this much harm before an act is evil, or consequentialist morality (1000 people shot at him, but only 1 landed the killing blow, so the other 999 are blameless), or a"balancing the accounts" morality (like utilitarianism), where you have to measure the effects.

You do recognize that not everyone agrees that these are obviously the only correct way to evaluate morality, right? Heck, even "thou shalt not kill" doesn't follow that logic. Which isn't to say that you're necessarily wrong, but rather is an invitation for you to explain yourself, since not everyone is starting at the same baseline here.

-----

Let's say that I invented a new spell: Radiant Sphere. It's like fireball, but more powerful. And every time I cast it, the background radiation level increases across the entire universe. Probably not by enough for modern Geiger counters to measure an individual casting, but some theoretical omniscient "god" could. At what point does casting the spell become evil?

What is the nature of morality, (IYO)?

[Lord Raziere]

....if said god is omniscient....why don't they know the way to reverse that radiation....and just tell the human the way to make the same spell that is stronger than fireball....without that drawback?

[Psyren]

....if said god is omniscient....why don't they know the way to reverse that radiation....and just tell the human the way to make the same spell that is stronger than fireball....without that drawback?

Replace "omniscient" with "able to measure the exact level of cumulative harm it's doing and capable of doing" then.

D&D gods are not all-powerful after all, nor even all-knowing. But they do know, and are capable of, more than the mortals are.

[Max_Killjoy]

I actually didn't see your question. Not sure if you noticed but the thread is moving pretty fast and several people (myself included) are posting novels on top of that.

As the only planes that appear to be free of spontaneous undead appear to be the upper planes and the PEP, I'd say there is a baseline level of undead spawning that routine reanimation can make worse. How much worse? Enough that the act is considered to be evil (but not necessarily as heinous as murder for example.)


See, that's part of the problem -- you're effectively saying "it was called evil so we know it's evil enough to be called evil, and the details don't matter".

And for me, and Segev, and some others, that's not a functional argument, it's a just-so story, a tautology. You can tag it "Evil", but if no one can answer the question of "how much worse", then we have no way of reaching a conclusion on whether it is, in fact, evil. And we can't compare the risks and impacts to things we might say are evil, or might say aren't evil.

We don't know if it's "evil enough to be called evil", because no one will tell us what we need to know to determine if it is, in fact, evil.

...

To avoid real-world discussion, let's use a fantasy setting as an example of why the details matter. Imagine a world in which the energy to power spells has to be stored in special crystals, and those special crystals are rare, and they wear out over time, and have to be mined in dangerous conditions, so they're expensive and profitable. People die mining these crystals.

You're a healer, and you need the crystals to store up magic to power your spells. You use your spells to save people from disease, death, being crippled, etc. But you know that every crystal you buy might be one that someone died getting out of a mine somewhere. So, does that make the act of using that crystal evil, because someone might have died mining it, because people do die mining them? Does the risk/rate of deaths matter? If the math works out that you save 100 people for every person that died getting the crystals you're using, is using them an evil act?

Now I'm pretty sure you're going to say "that's not like undead so it doesn't count", which misses the point, but OK, let's make it more like the Liber Mortis animate dead assertions.

Some of the mines where the crystals are extracted are run using abject slave labor; whole families of slaves are kept in squalid conditions, and the children are sent into the mines to crawl into tight spaces as soon as they can hold tools. So every crystal you buy might have come from one of those mines -- and every time you buy a crystal, you might be empowering the slavers to buy more slaves from slavers, and every time you use a crystal to cast a spell, you might be indirectly empowering that system to open more mines and seize more slaves and work more children to death.

Is that close enough to "each time you cast this spell might it cause more undead to spontaneously spawn in the world" hypothetical?



If that's the situation... do you say that every healing spell you cast is evil?
Does it matter what the odds are that the crystal you use in that spell actually came from one of these slaver mines?
Does it matter if you do what you can to avoid buying crystals from those mines?
Does it matter how many people you save before the odds say you've almost certainly sent gold back up the supply chain to pay for the death of a child in a mine?



...



I'm not seeing any difference between 5e and LM in that regard. "Mindless undead default to destroying life" is true in both editions.


5e skips the vague assertions of some unknown risk of an unknown number of extra undead against an unknown background rate of spontaneous undead, and directly states that because undead are hard to control and inherently dangerous, even the basic skeletons and zombies, you're running a risk every time you use the spell to animate some undead -- it's not that casting the spell, or the spell itself, is "Evil", it's that disregard for the risks involved in casting it routinely or causally is a strong indicator that the caster is or leans heavily evil. At least 5e is indirectly stating that intent and outcome matter at least as much as silly "evil because I said so" tautologies.

[Segev]

OK, let me try a different angle, then: *why* is anything evil? I think (not an intentional strawman, correct me if I'm wrong) that, like most people, you are equating "evil" with "harmful" or some such. But what if evil doesn't work that way? What if, in some imagined morality system, "evil" was something defined by first principles. Add connection to NEP? Evil. Kill someone with the "good" tag? Evil. Whatever.

So, if "adding to NEP connection" is evil, then the comparison isn't "something more evil" (whatever that means), but "something that causes more connection to the NEP". And, yes, if something causes more connection to the NEP, but isn't called out as "evil", then it's a flaw in the moral system.

But, so long as murder doesn't add to the connection to the NEP, this hypothetical morality system is perfectly within its rights to claim that creating undead is evil, but murder isn't.
You're confusing "first principles" with "fiat." What you're describing is fiat, not first principles.

Utilitarianism and consequentialism - which I am not outright supporting, but which come closer than the alternatives thus far mentioned in this thread - are also based on first principles. "That which promotes greater harm is evil" is a valid first principle.

I reject fiat morality because it becomes a look-up table with no pattern. It makes the terms "good" and "evil" meaningless except as team names.

"The following things are good: steak, computers, old people, roller coasters. The following things are evil: numbers, vegetables, dogs, water."

Why are they good or evil? Because fiat. The authority figure defined "good" and "evil" that way. "Good" and "evil" thus have, at best, a coincidental relationship to anything resembling the concepts in standard English.

So, let me turn this around on you: Why is creating a connection to the NEP evil? You've posited that the effects of doing so are irrelevant; why should a classically-good (somebody who, IRL, nobody would question was a great guy, generous, kind, always helping others, never hurts a fly) person refrain from making connections to the NEP if there are no negative consequences, other than it's labeled "evil?"

Let's say that creating connections to the NEP reduces disease world-wide, cures it in specific people, and solves local hunger problems, with no side-effects anybody would object to (unless they were jerks who liked seeing people suffer). But, the gods have said, "Connecting to the NEP is evil." Maybe because they like having the color black be associated with edgy evilness.

Does this make for a coherent setting? Does it serve any purpose to call the saint who goes around saving lives and making everybody happier and never, ever does anything that would make those with perfect knowledge of his character think ill of him an "evil man" for connecting to the NEP, when there's nothing bad (other than "it's evil") about doing so?

[Gallowglass]

You're confusing "first principles" with "fiat." What you're describing is fiat, not first principles.

Utilitarianism and consequentialism - which I am not outright supporting, but which come closer than the alternatives thus far mentioned in this thread - are also based on first principles. "That which promotes greater harm is evil" is a valid first principle.

I reject fiat morality because it becomes a look-up table with no pattern. It makes the terms "good" and "evil" meaningless except as team names.

"The following things are good: steak, computers, old people, roller coasters. The following things are evil: numbers, vegetables, dogs, water."

Why are they good or evil? Because fiat. The authority figure defined "good" and "evil" that way. "Good" and "evil" thus have, at best, a coincidental relationship to anything resembling the concepts in standard English.

So, let me turn this around on you: Why is creating a connection to the NEP evil? You've posited that the effects of doing so are irrelevant; why should a classically-good (somebody who, IRL, nobody would question was a great guy, generous, kind, always helping others, never hurts a fly) person refrain from making connections to the NEP if there are no negative consequences, other than it's labeled "evil?"

Let's say that creating connections to the NEP reduces disease world-wide, cures it in specific people, and solves local hunger problems, with no side-effects anybody would object to (unless they were jerks who liked seeing people suffer). But, the gods have said, "Connecting to the NEP is evil." Maybe because they like having the color black be associated with edgy evilness.

Does this make for a coherent setting? Does it serve any purpose to call the saint who goes around saving lives and making everybody happier and never, ever does anything that would make those with perfect knowledge of his character think ill of him an "evil man" for connecting to the NEP, when there's nothing bad (other than "it's evil") about doing so?

I can no longer fathom what response you want or are looking for here.

I feel that the system definition in D&D over editions and decades have been very clear. The Negative Energy Plane takes energy from the Prime Material Plane and the Position Energy Plane gives energy to the Prime Material Plane. Maybe that's occasionally described as The Negative Energy Plane put poisonous "bad" energy into the Prime Material Plane rather than the simpler stealing energy from it definition. Either way, the NEP causes harm to the Prime Material and the PEP has a net benefit. *shrug* That has been a consistent message.

So a setting where creating connections to the NEP reduce disease world-wide, cures it in specific people and solves local hunger problems, etc.... no, it wouldn't make for a coherent setting. But that's not any setting I'm aware of. All it would be is creating a setting where the NEP is now good and the PEP is now evil. *shrug* purple and orange.

The failing you seem to be objecting to is that there is a lack of concrete rules about what that means. That it gets "hand-waved" and stated as a universal truth without delving into it to, what you would find to be, a satisfactory and substantial level.

I don't find that to be a fault. I like that the system leaves the execution to the individual DMs. It means in some worlds and some systems, this would be a null factor. In some others it would be an overriding and overbearing part of the story.

A perfectly valid story to tell would be that its all been a ruse, a lie. That the NEP does NOT really poison or steal energy from the Prime Materials. That things like undead are anti-bodies ejected into the Prime Material by the NEP as a defense mechanism for what the NEP views as an attack on it by the Prime Material and that the Gods have been lying all along. That they've been hoodwinking us into being unwitting weapons in a war we cannot fathom or understand.

If they hard coded and codified it to the level you seem to be asking for, then telling such a story would no longer be perfectly valid and people would complain about it as "you are breaking the rules!"

[Quertus]

....if said god is omniscient....why don't they know the way to reverse that radiation....and just tell the human the way to make the same spell that is stronger than fireball....without that drawback?

It is theoretically possible to know the number of atoms of water in the ocean. They are countable. That doesn't mean that the person crying into the ocean knows what effect they've had. Same concept with the radiation. I am asking, what if it has math that is not necessarily discernable, but has effects that we can comprehend (radiation) - at what point is the spell evil?


You're confusing "first principles" with "fiat." What you're describing is fiat, not first principles.

Utilitarianism and consequentialism - which I am not outright supporting, but which come closer than the alternatives thus far mentioned in this thread - are also based on first principles. "That which promotes greater harm is evil" is a valid first principle.

I reject fiat morality because it becomes a look-up table with no pattern. It makes the terms "good" and "evil" meaningless except as team names.

"The following things are good: steak, computers, old people, roller coasters. The following things are evil: numbers, vegetables, dogs, water."

Why are they good or evil? Because fiat. The authority figure defined "good" and "evil" that way. "Good" and "evil" thus have, at best, a coincidental relationship to anything resembling the concepts in standard English.

So, let me turn this around on you: Why is creating a connection to the NEP evil? You've posited that the effects of doing so are irrelevant; why should a classically-good (somebody who, IRL, nobody would question was a great guy, generous, kind, always helping others, never hurts a fly) person refrain from making connections to the NEP if there are no negative consequences, other than it's labeled "evil?"

Let's say that creating connections to the NEP reduces disease world-wide, cures it in specific people, and solves local hunger problems, with no side-effects anybody would object to (unless they were jerks who liked seeing people suffer). But, the gods have said, "Connecting to the NEP is evil." Maybe because they like having the color black be associated with edgy evilness.

Does this make for a coherent setting? Does it serve any purpose to call the saint who goes around saving lives and making everybody happier and never, ever does anything that would make those with perfect knowledge of his character think ill of him an "evil man" for connecting to the NEP, when there's nothing bad (other than "it's evil") about doing so?

Utilitarianism and Kantian ethics both have just a single first principle. Part of my question is, you can have multiple first principles?

How is "increase happiness" any less fiat than "increase happiness, don't increase connection to NEP"?

Turning the question around on me won't get you very far, as I'm asking about the nature of morality. I am asking a question - nothing I say has any bearing on that. I am asking if it is possible to have multiple 1st principles, whether morality can is dependent upon the the universe. I am asking about the nature of morality.

[Quertus]

We don't know if it's "evil enough to be called evil", because no one will tell us what we need to know to determine if it is, in fact, evil.

...

To avoid real-world discussion, let's use a fantasy setting as an example of why the details matter. Imagine a world in which the energy to power spells has to be stored in special crystals, and those special crystals are rare, and they wear out over time, and have to be mined in dangerous conditions, so they're expensive and profitable. People die mining these crystals.

You're a healer, and you need the crystals to store up magic to power your spells. You use your spells to save people from disease, death, being crippled, etc. But you know that every crystal you buy might be one that someone died getting out of a mine somewhere. So, does that make the act of using that crystal evil, because someone might have died mining it, because people do die mining them? Does the risk/rate of deaths matter? If the math works out that you save 100 people for every person that died getting the crystals you're using, is using them an evil act?

Now I'm pretty sure you're going to say "that's not like undead so it doesn't count", which misses the point, but OK, let's make it more like the Liber Mortis animate dead assertions.

Some of the mines where the crystals are extracted are run using abject slave labor; whole families of slaves are kept in squalid conditions, and the children are sent into the mines to crawl into tight spaces as soon as they can hold tools. So every crystal you buy might have come from one of those mines -- and every time you buy a crystal, you might be empowering the slavers to buy more slaves from slavers, and every time you use a crystal to cast a spell, you might be indirectly empowering that system to open more mines and seize more slaves and work more children to death.

Is that close enough to "each time you cast this spell might it cause more undead to spontaneously spawn in the world" hypothetical?



If that's the situation... do you say that every healing spell you cast is evil?
Does it matter what the odds are that the crystal you use in that spell actually came from one of these slaver mines?
Does it matter if you do what you can to avoid buying crystals from those mines?
Does it matter how many people you save before the odds say you've almost certainly sent gold back up the supply chain to pay for the death of a child in a mine?


It sounds like you're defining "evil" as "causes harm". Is that accurate? Because that's the root level thing I'm after - what is the nature of evil, IYO?

If we're just measuring "harm", then, sure, we can set up ratios of "harm" to "good done" to define what is "evil".

However.

There are those who claim that any harm done, no matter how much good is done, makes the act evil. To them, all one would need do is prove that "adding to connection to NEP causes harm", and any spell (like Animate Dead) that increases the connection to the NEP is evil.

Is that how D&D morality works? Is that how morality should work? Shrug. I'm not going to claim to have the answers on either count. But this is the level I'm trying to get the conversation to, to understand where people are coming from, to understand what the developers would need to say to whom to convince them of the righteousness of the "evil" tag.

Me? I'm satisfied with "increasing connection to NEP is evil, Animate Dead increases the connection to the NEP, so Animate Dead is evil" - or would be, if the devs had spelled that out. Regardless of whether it translates to/from "real-world" morality.

-----

Also, I've gotta recommend "The ones who Walk Away from Omelas". IMO, it's a great short story about the nature of morality. It's what's usually in the back of my head when people start asking about what's moral.

[Talakeal]

This is the key thing. D&D morality is deontological. Based on first principles, not on the consequences of the actions. Whether or not that's the working law of this universe, it's the working law of the D&D one. From this perspective, much of the "well, does it do more good than harm?" questions are just moot. They're irrelevant. The only question is "does it violate one of the first principles of D&D morality? And here, the creation of undead very much does. Because the people responsible for setting those first principles said so, if for no other reason. You can dislike these first principles, but you cannot deny that these are the underlying principles. And there's no consistency requirement. A perfectly cromulent set of first principles might condemn the color pink based on some strange (to us) principle. But if that is the underlying moral principle in a world where good and evil are objective moral absolutes, it's the undeniable truth.

Which goes back to the "D&D is a cosmic horror setting" where what our own emotions and logic tell as are good acts are actually evil, and people whom we view as good and virtuous are condemned to the lower planes or worse.

Its also inconsistent as evil is clearly stronger in D&D, for example [evil] spells have a corrupting influence but [good] spells have no corresponding purifying influence.

[Segev]

I can no longer fathom what response you want or are looking for here.

I feel that the system definition in D&D over editions and decades have been very clear. The Negative Energy Plane takes energy from the Prime Material Plane and the Position Energy Plane gives energy to the Prime Material Plane. Maybe that's occasionally described as The Negative Energy Plane put poisonous "bad" energy into the Prime Material Plane rather than the simpler stealing energy from it definition. Either way, the NEP causes harm to the Prime Material and the PEP has a net benefit. *shrug* That has been a consistent message. I think part of why you can't fathom what I'm saying is that you're missing the context of that entire reply as being in response to Quertus's formulation of the question of "why isn't 'it connects to the NEP'" enough to make it evil, when you divorce 'evil' from the concept of 'causes harm?'"


Utilitarianism and Kantian ethics both have just a single first principle. Part of my question is, you can have multiple first principles?

How is "increase happiness" any less fiat than "increase happiness, don't increase connection to NEP"?

Turning the question around on me won't get you very far, as I'm asking about the nature of morality. I am asking a question - nothing I say has any bearing on that. I am asking if it is possible to have multiple 1st principles, whether morality can is dependent upon the the universe. I am asking about the nature of morality.To the part I bolded from the above quote, first: Because the idea that something is "evil" when it doesn't actually seem to have any negative consequences at all is straining the definition to be one of personal taste rather than anything even remotely possible to discuss in even a vaguely objective sense.

I'm turning the question around on you because I'm pointing out that the question you're asking is relatively meaningless.

You're asking, "Why must water be a liquid conglomeration primarily consisteing of molecules made up of one oxygen and two hydrogen? How is that any less fiat than saying water is that, and also anything blue is water?"

Sure, you could define it that way. It is not, however, useful to do so. It actively confounds understanding, and can only serve if your goal is to deliberately create strange cases where what is instinctively known to be "dry" is unquestionably (by fiat) "water."

Sure, if your goal is to write a morality play where good is evil, you can do so by redefining evil to include good things, and redefining good to be "anything opposing evil." But at that point, you're not really discussing good and evil anymore. You're discussing labels you've applied to things that aren't collquially good and evil, and then trying to extrapolate that to the definitions people commonly go by.

"It's evil because we say so, no matter how much our justifications would make a lot of non-evil things equally evil, nor how little it actually seems like it is a bad thing in any way other than we've made it taboo," is not good design.

[Anymage]

Turning the question around on me won't get you very far, as I'm asking about the nature of morality. I am asking a question - nothing I say has any bearing on that. I am asking if it is possible to have multiple 1st principles, whether morality can is dependent upon the the universe. I am asking about the nature of morality.

In theory, yes. If I wanted this topic to go completely down in flames, I could quote various holy books on various things that they claim to be immoral, that are considered no big deal by most people nowadays. I could certainly run a game where "good" and "evil" were defined by close adherence to such a collection of rules.

Unsurprisingly, this would be very unsatisfying to a large number of gamers. And while I could enjoy the exercise of trying to play someone with a very different moral outlook than my own, I would expect a few things from such a system. At the very least, an open acknowledgement of where it's coming from and that it's trying to sell a particular worldview instead of making a universal claim. Games with a tighter exploration focus also tend towards shorter campaigns. D&D, with its sights set on extended campaigns and near-ubiquity as the biggest RPG out there, really isn't the game I want to use for that.

It isn't that you couldn't make a D&D world where homosexuality is declared abomination as a first principle. It's that you'd piss off a lot of prospective players is you tried to do it. Similarly, declaring "this thing doesn't cause any observable harm, but it's Evil because Reasons" will frustrate a lot of players. Given that 5e did give us a more concrete sense of risks, I don't see why people are so insistent on fiat morality or the LM justification.


I can no longer fathom what response you want or are looking for here.

I feel that the system definition in D&D over editions and decades have been very clear. The Negative Energy Plane takes energy from the Prime Material Plane and the Position Energy Plane gives energy to the Prime Material Plane. Maybe that's occasionally described as The Negative Energy Plane put poisonous "bad" energy into the Prime Material Plane rather than the simpler stealing energy from it definition. Either way, the NEP causes harm to the Prime Material and the PEP has a net benefit. *shrug* That has been a consistent message.

So a setting where creating connections to the NEP reduce disease world-wide, cures it in specific people and solves local hunger problems, etc.... no, it wouldn't make for a coherent setting. But that's not any setting I'm aware of. All it would be is creating a setting where the NEP is now good and the PEP is now evil. *shrug* purple and orange...

The problem is that, by core 3.5, negative energy does not cause any problems. In fact, negative energy in itself is explicitly called out as morally unaligned. Animating a skeleton is a net moral good because that skeleton can be set to menial and/or dangerous tasks while freeing up living people to do things they'd actually want to do.

Adding the idea that negative energy is somehow evil and will counterbalance the benefit you have putting that skeleton to work, you'll want to show us how it's harmful. It is doable with just fluff. Again, given that D&D designers gave a much more concrete reason in the current edition, I wonder why people are so insistent on the 3.5 answer.

[Psyren]

See, that's part of the problem -- you're effectively saying "it was called evil so we know it's evil enough to be called evil, and the details don't matter".

And for me, and Segev, and some others, that's not a functional argument, it's a just-so story, a tautology. You can tag it "Evil", but if no one can answer the question of "how much worse", then we have no way of reaching a conclusion on whether it is, in fact, evil. And we can't compare the risks and impacts to things we might say are evil, or might say aren't evil.

We don't know if it's "evil enough to be called evil", because no one will tell us what we need to know to determine if it is, in fact, evil.

But you do know that; they didn't have to give you any justification or math at all. It might not be satisfying (to you two) but that's little more than a matter of opinion. It's no different than the designers requiring that all monks have to be lawful or that all barbarians can't be, they're under no obligation to explain it.

But in this case they did provide a justification, and for me it is satisfying, because I'm more interested in the fact that there IS a potential calculus that could result in this outcome than in computing that calculus for a particular world. Again I ask - is there a number that would convince you? If so, mentally compute it to be that. If not, then you've made up your minds, and no amount of time spent on onanistic napkin math would do it, leaving us all free to find better uses for that time.

On top of which, this kind of calculus doesn't actually matter for categorizing a single act anyway (see below).


To avoid real-world discussion, let's use a fantasy setting as an example of why the details matter. Imagine a world in which the energy to power spells has to be stored in special crystals, and those special crystals are rare, and they wear out over time, and have to be mined in dangerous conditions, so they're expensive and profitable. People die mining these crystals.

You're a healer, and you need the crystals to store up magic to power your spells. You use your spells to save people from disease, death, being crippled, etc. But you know that every crystal you buy might be one that someone died getting out of a mine somewhere. So, does that make the act of using that crystal evil, because someone might have died mining it, because people do die mining them? Does the risk/rate of deaths matter? If the math works out that you save 100 people for every person that died getting the crystals you're using, is using them an evil act?

Now I'm pretty sure you're going to say "that's not like undead so it doesn't count", which misses the point, but OK, let's make it more like the Liber Mortis animate dead assertions.

Some of the mines where the crystals are extracted are run using abject slave labor; whole families of slaves are kept in squalid conditions, and the children are sent into the mines to crawl into tight spaces as soon as they can hold tools. So every crystal you buy might have come from one of those mines -- and every time you buy a crystal, you might be empowering the slavers to buy more slaves from slavers, and every time you use a crystal to cast a spell, you might be indirectly empowering that system to open more mines and seize more slaves and work more children to death.

Is that close enough to "each time you cast this spell might it cause more undead to spontaneously spawn in the world" hypothetical?


If that's the situation... do you say that every healing spell you cast is evil?
Does it matter what the odds are that the crystal you use in that spell actually came from one of these slaver mines?
Does it matter if you do what you can to avoid buying crystals from those mines?
Does it matter how many people you save before the odds say you've almost certainly sent gold back up the supply chain to pay for the death of a child in a mine?


While I appreciate the attempt to amend your analogy with the slaver spiral, there's still a bunch more reasons why it fails. Here's a partial list:

- The primary problem is that your crystal analogy, like Segev's misbegotten trolley, starts from the very wrong assumption that undead reanimation is somehow necessary to society. Just as there are other many other ways to till a field besides undead labor - which we know for a fact because the overwhelming majority of D&D societies don't produce food that way - there are plenty of ways to treat disease without risking innocent lives getting crystals out of the ground. If you're instead arguing that that's the only way to cure diseases in this fantasy world, then it ceases to be analogous to anything happening with necromancy in D&D on that vector too, because reanimating corpses is and always will be a wholly voluntary act in D&D.

- Do the miners have a choice on whether to be sent in or not? If not, that's clearly evil no matter how much potential good it's doing. In the undead example, they don't - the effects are planewide, so the potential victims have no way of making an informed choice as to their own specific danger, and the necromancers certainly aren't choosing to avoid those less able to protect themselves.

- Putting the whole analogy aside - with the ratio, you're effectively asking "does murdering 1 to save 100 stop the 1 murder from being an evil act in D&D?" The clear answer to that is no, it's still an evil act. If you believe it to be a necessary evil, you do it anyway, and then make amends - expressing contrition, doing everything you can to keep that scenario from coming about again, making restitution to the surviving family of the one you had to kill, getting an atonement spell, etc. In other words, you must be "truly repentant and desirous of setting things right" as the spell says. Making it the foundation of your industry doesn't fit that bill, no matter whether you've worked out that you're saving 100 or 10,000. Furthermore, you have an obligation to exhaust all other alternatives first before killing; and since there are plenty of alternatives (see first bullet), the necromancer in question can't possibly have done that.

And on top of all that, your number one priority should be figuring out a way to heal people without hurting anyone else. Necromancers don't do that - they're all in on their specific method of securing "labor."



5e skips the vague assertions of some unknown risk of an unknown number of extra undead against an unknown background rate of spontaneous undead, and directly states that because undead are hard to control and inherently dangerous, even the basic skeletons and zombies, you're running a risk every time you use the spell to animate some undead -- it's not that casting the spell, or the spell itself, is "Evil", it's that disregard for the risks involved in casting it routinely or causally is a strong indicator that the caster is or leans heavily evil. At least 5e is indirectly stating that intent and outcome matter at least as much as silly "evil because I said so" tautologies.

No, I'm still not seeing a material difference. In both cases, casting the spell routinely or casually requires disregard for the risks involved. The nature of that risk is merely direct as opposed to indirect; I'm sure the innocent getting their brain chowed on will appreciate the distinction as you calmly explain it to them in an academic setting, once their screams subside anyway.

[Max_Killjoy]

There is indeed a difference. If my math is correct, that difference is (on average) .999 undead.


One takes 100s of castings to increase the number of spontaneous undead by 1%, and no one is sure which casting it was.

The other increases the number of spontaneous undead from zero to +1/casting, every time the spell is cast.




If either is evil, both are evil, unless evil is measured in degrees.

If firing a shot off into a crowd only has a .1% chance if killing someone, does that make that not evil, while pulling the switch that had a higher probability of killing someone is?


Why are you firing into the crowd? What are you trying to accomplish, what is your intent? Sounds like a morally, ethically, and legally irresponsible action without more details.

We're not arguing "morality by degrees", we're trying to explain that there are things almost no one calls evil, that would be "Evil" by the reasoning used in Liber Mortis to call Animate Dead and similar spells "Evil", that the standard applied in Liber Mortis isn't being applied broadly, but is instead a special just-so explanation retroactively designed to give the desired outcome without consideration of the broader implications and complications.




It sounds like you are either using some sort of "threshold" morality (I'm just making up names here, doubtless someone will correct me), where you must do this much harm before an act is evil, or consequentialist morality (1000 people shot at him, but only 1 landed the killing blow, so the other 999 are blameless), or a"balancing the accounts" morality (like utilitarianism), where you have to measure the effects.

You do recognize that not everyone agrees that these are obviously the only correct way to evaluate morality, right? Heck, even "thou shalt not kill" doesn't follow that logic. Which isn't to say that you're necessarily wrong, but rather is an invitation for you to explain yourself, since not everyone is starting at the same baseline here.


We're not arguing for thresholds or karmic balance, either.

We're (or at least I'm) trying to explain that morality is always more complicated than a set of simple rules. OK, so the gods of Fantasyworld have decreed "Killing is evil". OK, so you don't kill, ever, or you're doing evil, at least according to the gods. Fine.

So... an enemy agent is about to collapse a dam and wipe out a town, killing the 1000 people who live there. Your only chance to stop him is to kill him, right now. Do you kill him and "do evil", or do you retain your "moral purity" and allow him to kill 1000 people?

My position is that if the gods would accuse me of "doing evil" for killing the agent and saving 1000 people in the town below the damn... then the gods are morally bankrupt idiots who have no clue about right and wrong, and I would take the "evil" tag with defiance and a raised middle finger, knowing I did the right thing even though the gods called it "evil".

[Gallowglass]

We're (or at least I'm) trying to explain that morality is always more complicated than a set of simple rules. OK, so the gods of Fantasyworld have decreed "Killing is evil". OK, so you don't kill, ever, or you're doing evil, at least according to the gods. Fine.

So... an enemy agent is about to collapse a dam and wipe out a town, killing the 1000 people who live there. Your only chance to stop him is to kill him, right now. Do you kill him and "do evil", or do you retain your "moral purity" and allow him to kill 1000 people?

My position is that if the gods would accuse me of "doing evil" for killing the agent and saving 1000 people in the town below the damn... then the gods are morally bankrupt idiots who have no clue about right and wrong, and I would take the "evil" tag with defiance and a raised middle finger, knowing I did the right thing even though the gods called it "evil".





I suppose a person of faith would argue with you that the God(s) don't need to explain their reasoning to you behind the rules and laws they expect you to abide by.

It wouldn't be hard to imagine that there may be more behind your scenario than what you understand. To you, you see a choice between saving 1000 people and killing 1 "madman" who wants to blow up a dam. To the gods they see that, if that dam blows and those 1000 people die, it also kills off an emerging viral threat that, if left unchecked, would kill millions.

"But surely there's a better way to check that viral threat?" Sure, I'm just giving it as a possibility and to illustrate that you could assume a good faith effort by the Gods to be.... if not benevolent, then at least non-capricious caretakers of the fabric of the universe. And that their rules must serve a purpose even if its unclear to us and that they don't owe us an explanation.

But if you choose to believe the Gods are capricious and refuse to accept that they have such a good faith effort, then you'll never be convinced otherwise. But not because the argument isn't valid, because you are stubborn in your refusal to accept you don't know everything and don't get to know everything. You don't want to be proven wrong so you will never accept an argument that does so as valid. As stubborn, in your own way, as this theoretical person of faith is in their insistence that the God(s) in question have a plan and reason for their immutable decrees in the first place.

I'm not a person of faith, so I'm not the right person to argue with you on that though. Gods suck. Especially fantasy game Gods who are universally ********s.

However, you have an extreme false equivalence in your argument.

Having to make a choice to kill 1 madman to save 1000 people when Tarm says "killing is bad" is a world of difference away from Tarm saying "making undead is bad" and you saying "but its such a convenient tool, how could I choose to use a different spell instead."


"OH my Tarm, the dam has a leak and its going to collapse! Quick" *summons zombie, tells it to stick a finger in the hole.* "There, fixed!"

"Uh, you could've just put a stick or something in there."

"Nope. Fixed! Undead are tools for good!"

[Quertus]

To the part I bolded from the above quote, first: Because the idea that something is "evil" when it doesn't actually seem to have any negative consequences at all is straining the definition to be one of personal taste rather than anything even remotely possible to discuss in even a vaguely objective sense.

I'm turning the question around on you because I'm pointing out that the question you're asking is relatively meaningless.

You're asking, "Why must water be a liquid conglomeration primarily consisteing of molecules made up of one oxygen and two hydrogen? How is that any less fiat than saying water is that, and also anything blue is water?"

Sure, you could define it that way. It is not, however, useful to do so. It actively confounds understanding, and can only serve if your goal is to deliberately create strange cases where what is instinctively known to be "dry" is unquestionably (by fiat) "water."

Sure, if your goal is to write a morality play where good is evil, you can do so by redefining evil to include good things, and redefining good to be "anything opposing evil." But at that point, you're not really discussing good and evil anymore. You're discussing labels you've applied to things that aren't collquially good and evil, and then trying to extrapolate that to the definitions people commonly go by.

"It's evil because we say so, no matter how much our justifications would make a lot of non-evil things equally evil, nor how little it actually seems like it is a bad thing in any way other than we've made it taboo," is not good design.

"Negative Consequences" - at long last, we have a winner. Y'all have finally stated something to use as a first principle!

So, morality is simply cold, hard calculus of harm? And, based on your posts, IYO, it's something one can balance? It's OK if I do X units of harm here, so long as doing so reduces X+Y units of harm there?

So, my question becomes, what makes this a "vaguely objective" measure of evil? Why is it more objective than, say, "any harm is evil", or "no action is evil, only individuals are evil - those who do more harm than benefit are evil"?

Or even other nuisances, like, "actions are not evil, only relationships. Every person has a ledger entry with every other person. Everyone you've done more harm than good to counts against you."

I have to understand what you / y'all consider the nature of morality to be in order to understand what the devs would have to say to make you agree that something is evil. And, to do that, I'm asking y'all to explain (your opinions on) the nature of morality.

So far, we have a tentative "first principle: harm". It's a start.


Unsurprisingly, this would be very unsatisfying to a large number of gamers. And while I could enjoy the exercise of trying to play someone with a very different moral outlook than my own, I would expect a few things from such a system. At the very least, an open acknowledgement of where it's coming from and that it's trying to sell a particular worldview instead of making a universal claim. Games with a tighter exploration focus also tend towards shorter campaigns. D&D, with its sights set on extended campaigns and near-ubiquity as the biggest RPG out there, really isn't the game I want to use for that.

It isn't that you couldn't make a D&D world where homosexuality is declared abomination as a first principle. It's that you'd piss off a lot of prospective players is you tried to do it. Similarly, declaring "this thing doesn't cause any observable harm, but it's Evil because Reasons" will frustrate a lot of players. Given that 5e did give us a more concrete sense of risks, I don't see why people are so insistent on fiat morality or the LM justification.

The problem is that, by core 3.5, negative energy does not cause any problems. In fact, negative energy in itself is explicitly called out as morally unaligned. Animating a skeleton is a net moral good because that skeleton can be set to menial and/or dangerous tasks while freeing up living people to do things they'd actually want to do.

Adding the idea that negative energy is somehow evil and will counterbalance the benefit you have putting that skeleton to work, you'll want to show us how it's harmful. It is doable with just fluff. Again, given that D&D designers gave a much more concrete reason in the current edition, I wonder why people are so insistent on the 3.5 answer.

Why do you believe that evil has to counterbalance good done to be evil?

-----

One of my longest-running characters has a moral compass drastically different from my own. So I reject the notion that alternate morality necessitates shorter campaigns. I similarly reject from experience the notion that Discovery necessitates shorter campaigns, but that seems irrelevant to this discussion.


1) It's no different than the designers requiring that all monks have to be lawful or that all barbarians can't be, they're under no obligation to explain it.

2) But in this case they did provide a justification,

3) - Putting the whole analogy aside - with the ratio, you're effectively asking "does murdering 1 to save 100 stop the 1 murder from being an evil act in D&D?" The clear answer to that is no, it's still an evil act. If you believe it to be a necessary evil, you do it anyway, and then make amends -

4) No, I'm still not seeing a material difference. In both cases, casting the spell routinely or casually requires disregard for the risks involved. The nature of that risk is merely direct as opposed to indirect; I'm sure the innocent getting their brain chowed on will appreciate the distinction as you calmly explain it to them in an academic setting, once their screams subside anyway.

Numbered for convenience.

1) actually, given that custom spells and custom classes are a thing, I think that the designers should have felt the obligation to explain all of those.

2) they did?

3) agreed. Which is why I believe Animate Dead can be evil regardless of the net consequences (in D&D morality, regardless of any real world analysis). Or could, if the devs had given a reason.

4) agreed. Ignoring the risk to the universe is an evil act (or doubtless could be construed as such by some moral systems). Protecting your own (and just your own) sounds like… what were the words… the bad part of (community?).

[Psyren]

1) actually, given that custom spells and custom classes are a thing, I think that the designers should have felt the obligation to explain all of those.

Disagree, what responsibility the designers may have at all is only to the default. Anything custom is the responsibility of the GM allowing/creating it.

(For the record, they do have high-level justification for lawful monks and non-lawful Barbarians in the PHB - it's thin but it's there. It's not on the SRD.)



2) they did?

In Libris Mortis and BoVD, yes. (I don't count Heroes of Horror because it seems to be aimed at a variant sort of game.)

[Anymage]

I suppose a person of faith would argue with you that the God(s) don't need to explain their reasoning to you behind the rules and laws they expect you to abide by.

It wouldn't be hard to imagine that there may be more behind your scenario than what you understand. To you, you see a choice between saving 1000 people and killing 1 "madman" who wants to blow up a dam. To the gods they see that, if that dam blows and those 1000 people die, it also kills off an emerging viral threat that, if left unchecked, would kill millions.

...

I'm not a person of faith, so I'm not the right person to argue with you on that though. Gods suck. Especially fantasy game Gods who are universally ********s.

There's a difference between "gods are totally ineffable" and "gods are smarter and more informed than you, trust them, but it'll all make sense in time". The former can tell you that you're evil for wearing purple or for rolling your tongue into a tube, and to a sizable chunk of players that does feel rather arbitrary.

OOTS Thor is Good. We may not have had a full understanding of his long-term plans early in the comic, but it's all comprehensible as we gain more information. Would you seriously argue that OOTS would be better if the gods were completely beyond mortal ken and truly incomprehensible?


But you do know that; they didn't have to give you any justification or math at all. It might not be satisfying (to you two) but that's little more than a matter of opinion. It's no different than the designers requiring that all monks have to be lawful or that all barbarians can't be, they're under no obligation to explain it.

But in this case they did provide a justification, and for me it is satisfying, because I'm more interested in the fact that there IS a potential calculus that could result in this outcome than in computing that calculus for a particular world. Again I ask - is there a number that would convince you? If so, mentally compute it to be that. If not, then you've made up your minds, and no amount of time spent on onanistic napkin math would do it, leaving us all free to find better uses for that time.

On top of which, this kind of calculus doesn't actually matter for categorizing a single act anyway (see below).

...

No, I'm still not seeing a material difference. In both cases, casting the spell routinely or casually requires disregard for the risks involved. The nature of that risk is merely direct as opposed to indirect; I'm sure the innocent getting their brain chowed on will appreciate the distinction as you calmly explain it to them in an academic setting, once their screams subside anyway.

To be fair, people are a lot more sensitive to shorter causal chains. Note how the Oracle is grasping at straws with his "caused the death of (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0567.html)" arguments.

I'm willing to grant that, okay, the gods of good did run the numbers. Negative energy is a form of pollution, and the drawbacks (metaphysical harm to the environment, increased chance of illness around the area, the chance of some innocent somewhere getting nommed by an undead) result losing more QALY (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year)s than you could gain from putting the raised skeleton to work. They're even happy to have some underling explain it to you, if you have a few decades and a hefty Int score.

I guess that ultimately, you get a more visceral reaction from players if they can see that the specific undead they raised caused a problem, and that the person hurt would not be hurt if not for the direct presence of the undead. Undead cause pollution can be viable, but feels a lot more disconnected.

[Quertus]

One takes 100s of castings to increase the number of spontaneous undead by 1%, and no one is sure which casting it was.

The other increases the number of spontaneous undead from zero to +1/casting, every time the spell is cast.

"But it wasn't *my* casting of Animate Dead that caused the Apocalypse, so I'm blameless"?

Or "I can't know if anyone across the world died to a spontaneously created undead because I increased the connection between the Prime and the NEP, so I'm blameless"?

Yes, modern laws have some sort of ratio of how much injury a product must cause before it's recalled. Does that mean that letting a product out the door with a known fatal defect chance below that level is morally justified? What if it's just one copy of that product? Does that change the moral or legal repercussions?


Why are you firing into the crowd? What are you trying to accomplish, what is your intent? Sounds like a morally, ethically, and legally irresponsible action without more details.

We're not arguing "morality by degrees", we're trying to explain that there are things almost no one calls evil, that would be "Evil" by the reasoning used in Liber Mortis to call Animate Dead and similar spells "Evil", that the standard applied in Liber Mortis isn't being applied broadly, but is instead a special just-so explanation retroactively designed to give the desired outcome without consideration of the broader implications and complications.

What is the reasoning in Libris Morris? And what "good" acts would be demonized following that logic?


We're not arguing for thresholds or karmic balance, either.

We're (or at least I'm) trying to explain that morality is always more complicated than a set of simple rules. OK, so the gods of Fantasyworld have decreed "Killing is evil". OK, so you don't kill, ever, or you're doing evil, at least according to the gods. Fine.

So... an enemy agent is about to collapse a dam and wipe out a town, killing the 1000 people who live there. Your only chance to stop him is to kill him, right now. Do you kill him and "do evil", or do you retain your "moral purity" and allow him to kill 1000 people?

My position is that if the gods would accuse me of "doing evil" for killing the agent and saving 1000 people in the town below the damn... then the gods are morally bankrupt idiots who have no clue about right and wrong, and I would take the "evil" tag with defiance and a raised middle finger, knowing I did the right thing even though the gods called it "evil".

Have I mentioned that my default character goal is "kill the gods", and that I consider it the moral imperative of every "good" character (and most evil ones) to do so?

[Max_Killjoy]

But you do know that; they didn't have to give you any justification or math at all. It might not be satisfying (to you two) but that's little more than a matter of opinion. It's no different than the designers requiring that all monks have to be lawful or that all barbarians can't be, they're under no obligation to explain it.

But in this case they did provide a justification, and for me it is satisfying, because I'm more interested in the fact that there IS a potential calculus that could result in this outcome than in computing that calculus for a particular world. Again I ask - is there a number that would convince you? If so, mentally compute it to be that. If not, then you've made up your minds, and no amount of time spent on onanistic napkin math would do it, leaving us all free to find better uses for that time.

On top of which, this kind of calculus doesn't actually matter for categorizing a single act anyway (see below).


No, I did not know that, I know they made the assertion, and nothing more. They provided no details by which I could judge whether that assertion is true.

If the designers are unwilling to provide any reasoning for aspects of the world such as "monks have to be lawful" or "barbarians can't be", then I can only come to the conclusion that they have no reasoning and just established this as a "just so" element not founded on any actual setting-level or other foundation.

I've seen this "use the number that would convince you" or "assume things work such that this is true" argument used before on these forums regarding something else, trying to remember what it was... and flatly, I refuse. I am not doing the work for the person making the claim, and "presume this position is supported by the facts" is not an argument.

Wait, I remember what it was... the whole "a lich is always evil because the things they have to do to become a lich would only be done by the most evil of evil people"... and when I asked what they had to do to become liches, I was told "whatever's evil enough in your mind that only an evil evil person would do it". Which is not an answer, it's both an evasion of the question and a demand that I do the work of justifying their claim for them.

You can say "if not, you've made up your mind", but so far, everything we've tried to use to examine the asserted standard has just been met with "but that's not like undead", which is starting to sound very much like there's absolutely nothing that will "be like undead" such that your response won't be to just refuse to go into the details.




While I appreciate the attempt to amend your analogy with the slaver spiral, there's still a bunch more reasons why it fails. Here's a partial list:

- The primary problem is that your crystal analogy, like Segev's misbegotten trolley, starts from the very wrong assumption that undead reanimation is somehow necessary to society. Just as there are other many other ways to till a field besides undead labor - which we know for a fact because the overwhelming majority of D&D societies don't produce food that way - there are plenty of ways to treat disease without risking innocent lives getting crystals out of the ground. If you're instead arguing that that's the only way to cure diseases in this fantasy world, then it ceases to be analogous to anything happening with necromancy in D&D on that vector too, because reanimating corpses is and always will be a wholly voluntary act in D&D.


It's not an analogy, it's not about a "D&D world", it doesn't start from the assumptions you keep saying it does, and you're missing the point.

It's taking the vague standard you are relaying from the 3.5 books you're citing, and applying it to other situations, to see if it's a reasonable standard for judging whether an action is "evil". The crystals being minded by slaves was supposed to be a parallel situation to be subjected to the same standard, not an analogy for necromancy in a D&D world.

The detailed questions were to try to get across why we need the details to judge whether the standard being asserted is reasonable.

It is not an analogy, and as long as you keep trying to force it to be one, you're going to evade the entire point of laying it out and asking the questions. I've already stated that it wasn't intended to be a direct 1 for 1 parallel for the necromancy situation -- dismissing it as "this isn't a good parallel for necromancy" is like dismissing something for not being blue when I've already told you that it's not supposed to be blue in the first place and that the color isn't the point an




- Do the miners have a choice on whether to be sent in or not? If not, that's clearly evil no matter how much potential good it's doing. In the undead example, they don't - the effects are planewide, so the potential victims have no way of making an informed choice as to their own specific danger, and the necromancers certainly aren't choosing to avoid those less able to protect themselves.

- Putting the whole analogy aside - with the ratio, you're effectively asking "does murdering 1 to save 100 stop the 1 murder from being an evil act in D&D?" The clear answer to that is no, it's still an evil act. If you believe it to be a necessary evil, you do it anyway, and then make amends - expressing contrition, doing everything you can to keep that scenario from coming about again, making restitution to the surviving family of the one you had to kill, getting an atonement spell, etc. In other words, you must be "truly repentant and desirous of setting things right" as the spell says. Making it the foundation of your industry doesn't fit that bill, no matter whether you've worked out that you're saving 100 or 10,000. Furthermore, you have an obligation to exhaust all other alternatives first before killing; and since there are plenty of alternatives (see first bullet), the necromancer in question can't possibly have done that.

And on top of all that, your number one priority should be figuring out a way to heal people without hurting anyone else. Necromancers don't do that - they're all in on their specific method of securing "labor."


In the situation (not analogy) in question, the problem was not specifically that you were murdering 1 to save 100, it was that you were running X% risk of having contributed to the death of Y people to save Z people... trying to show why "you have some vague negative effect that carries an unknown risk at an unknown scope/scale" is not a functional standard for "this action is evil".




No, I'm still not seeing a material difference. In both cases, casting the spell routinely or casually requires disregard for the risks involved. The nature of that risk is merely direct as opposed to indirect; I'm sure the innocent getting their brain chowed on will appreciate the distinction as you calmly explain it to them in an academic setting, once their screams subside anyway.


Direct vs indirect changes everything -- it's exactly that indirect and utterly vague nature of the 3.5 "explanation" that calls it into question, while the direct nature of the 5e explanation leaves it far less questionable.

What is the actual risk of a spontaneous undead spawning when the spell is cast, and what is the background rate of undead spawning without the spell ever being cast?

Is the risk each time the spell is cast greater or less than the risk of lighting a town or forest on fire when casting a big fire spell? If it's less, then why isn't the big fire spell considered evil? That's why the actual risk matters. If your reply is just "fire is not like undead", then I'm not sure you've seen what an uncontrolled fire can do, and as noted above, I'd wonder if anything will be enough "like undead" that you won't stonewall the discussion with the same reply of "not like undead".

[Segev]

"Negative Consequences" - at long last, we have a winner. Y'all have finally stated something to use as a first principle!

So, morality is simply cold, hard calculus of harm? And, based on your posts, IYO, it's something one can balance? It's OK if I do X units of harm here, so long as doing so reduces X+Y units of harm there?Tut, tut. You're trying to play a reductio ad absurdum, and hold me to a standard I didn't espouse.

What I said was that evil must in some way amount to negative impact, or it is not meaningful to call it evil. I can't go into the full details of what I believe regarding good and evil, sin and cleansing oneself thereof, etc., without going into real world religion, but suffice it to say that, no, I don't subscribe to any theory which says "If I save enough puppies to more than compensate, I can torture as many orphans to death as I like and still be good."

Which tends to be the absurd consequence that the line of reasoning you're attempting to ascribe to me leads to.

However, that said? If you don't subscribe to some level of benefit/harm balance, then literally any act you take is irredeemably evil, because some negative impact occurs. Especially when you start allowing for "you doing this increases the odds of something bad happening" as potential for an act to be termed "evil."

Is it good to build a dam to secure a lake, control flood stages, and provide power to a nearby city? No, obviously not; it's evil because people die in such construction projects and there will be some negative impact to the wilderness where the lake will grow as the environment changes from "riverside woods" to "lakebed." So clearly, there's nothing to debate; it's inherently evil to do it.

But, of course, that's silly. While I'm sure there are some who would argue the environmental impact is such that it is evil, period, it is also unquestionably a matter of debate in the real world. So either all of mankind is irredeemably evil, or this act is at worst "questionable" because there is something to debate over whether it's evil or not. On the other hand, I think we can all agree that Nazis were unequivacally evil in their treatment of "untermenchen."

I think we can also agree that a device which killed three orphans per cancer patient it cured would be pretty evil to use.

So, to answer Psyren's question, yes, there are numbers which would make me buy it...but those numbers are high enough that the spell itself would provide some and you could easily see the impact. Which is clearly not true in-setting.


So, my question becomes, what makes this a "vaguely objective" measure of evil? Why is it more objective than, say, "any harm is evil", or "no action is evil, only individuals are evil - those who do more harm than benefit are evil"?

Or even other nuisances, like, "actions are not evil, only relationships. Every person has a ledger entry with every other person. Everyone you've done more harm than good to counts against you."

I have to understand what you / y'all consider the nature of morality to be in order to understand what the devs would have to say to make you agree that something is evil. And, to do that, I'm asking y'all to explain (your opinions on) the nature of morality.

So far, we have a tentative "first principle: harm". It's a start.Have you...just not read any of my posts where I've spelled out my preferred explanation for why casting animate dead is an evil act? I think it pretty clearly gives a solid indication of what devs could say on the subject to satisfy me. I mean, it may not be the only way to satisfy me, but it WOULD satisfy me. I don't think I'm being unclear or ambiguous, there.


Why do you believe that evil has to counterbalance good done to be evil?I don't. You're just reading that into what I'm saying, because you're ignoring other parts of it. I honestly don't know how to respond to this any clearer than I have; you're already demonstrating that you haven't understood my best efforts to explain it, or have somehow just not seen it. You haven't responded to it at all.

Short version: I would find animate dead to be believably [evil] if each casting of it caused pain and suffering for the souls of those whose bodies are so violated. (This is greatly simplified from longer explanations, such as an entire post dedicated to the subject on I think the last page.)


3) agreed. Which is why I believe Animate Dead can be evil regardless of the net consequences (in D&D morality, regardless of any real world analysis). Or could, if the devs had given a reason.Of course it can. But not if the only explanation is a vague increase in potential for bad stuff to happen, somewhere. If you rely on that, you're back to balancing risk/reward. Cost/benefit. For it to be evil regardless of net consequences, there must be evil results directly and indisputably tied to that given casting of the spell.


4) agreed. Ignoring the risk to the universe is an evil act (or doubtless could be construed as such by some moral systems). Protecting your own (and just your own) sounds like… what were the words… the bad part of (community?).There's a difference between "ignoring the risk" and "acknowledging and mitigating the risk, but still doing the thing." And that's the trouble.

You can't have inherently evil acts that are merely "risky." You can demonstrate evil by having somebody not care about the risk (to others), but you can't have it just plain be evil to do it at all, or even "regularly," just based on that. Not without a lot of unintended consequences in terms of making other things we don't knee-jerk say "evil" to becoming equally evil. Like driving your car to work each day.

[Gallowglass]

There's a difference between "gods are totally ineffable" and "gods are smarter and more informed than you, trust them, but it'll all make sense in time". The former can tell you that you're evil for wearing purple or for rolling your tongue into a tube, and to a sizable chunk of players that does feel rather arbitrary.

To the theoretical person of faith, no there isn't a difference. The only difference is that the second one implies that it will all make sense to you, in time and the first one makes no such promise. The person of faith says "no problem, I trust you and don't need to know why." The doubter says "I want a reason."

And yes, to the players, it may feel arbitrary, sure. Its up to the DM to make the reason behind wearing purple make some in-universe sense. Because this isn't real life. Its a game with rules.

I also take umbrage to the continued false equivalency.

If I was told "wearing purple is evil." I would question that. "I wonder why? That makes no sense to me."

If I'm told that "creating undead is evil." Well. Sure. I can see why pulling dark energies from the NEP and using it to force somebody's corpse to rise again as a crude puppet of its former self and that, left to its own devices, it will try to kill and eat anything living it finds is evil. I don't really need to doubt that. It seems self evident.

Max has a much better analogy with his "murder is evil" then being given a Hobson's choice of doing something evil for a good reason.



OOTS Thor is Good. We may not have had a full understanding of his long-term plans early in the comic, but it's all comprehensible as we gain more information. Would you seriously argue that OOTS would be better if the gods were completely beyond mortal ken and truly incomprehensible?


Good god no. How have I ever argued that it's "better" for the gods to be beyond mortal ken or incomprehensible? I think its terrible.

What I -do- think is that its okay for the rulebook to say "this is evil" for nebulous and ill-defined reasons and with nebulous and ill-defined consequences and leave it to the individual DM to explain why within the individual games.

And I also believe its a perfectly reasonable base explanation of "because the Gods said so and the Gods didn't explain why." Note: I said "perfectly reasonable" not "better than if it was explained." That's you writing into my argument things that are not there.

[Psyren]

I've seen this "use the number that would convince you" or "assume things work such that this is true" argument used before on these forums regarding something else, trying to remember what it was... and flatly, I refuse. I am not doing the work for the person making the claim, and "presume this position is supported by the facts" is not an argument.

And that's totally fine, that's your prerogative. But flatly, I refuse to do the work of finding the magic number that would convince you either, and just as flatly, so should the designers.



It's not an analogy, it's not about a "D&D world", it doesn't start from the assumptions you keep saying it does, and you're missing the point.

It's taking the vague standard you are relaying from the 3.5 books you're citing, and applying it to other situations, to see if it's a reasonable standard for judging whether an action is "evil". The crystals being minded by slaves was supposed to be a parallel situation to be subjected to the same standard, not an analogy for necromancy in a D&D world.

The detailed questions were to try to get across why we need the details to judge whether the standard being asserted is reasonable.

It is not an analogy, and as long as you keep trying to force it to be one, you're going to evade the entire point of laying it out and asking the questions. I've already stated that it wasn't intended to be a direct 1 for 1 parallel for the necromancy situation -- dismissing it as "this isn't a good parallel for necromancy" is like dismissing something for not being blue when I've already told you that it's not supposed to be blue in the first place and that the color isn't the point an


In the situation (not analogy) in question, the problem was not specifically that you were murdering 1 to save 100, it was that you were running X% risk of having contributed to the death of Y people to save Z people... trying to show why "you have some vague negative effect that carries an unknown risk at an unknown scope/scale" is not a functional standard for "this action is evil".

But you're not applying it at all; you're leaving out crucial details, which are contained in my responses to you. Such as level of necessity (curing disease with your crystals is not analogous to lacks the situational imperative of animating corpses to till a field) and volition (free-willed necromancers are not analogous to lack the situational imperative of enslaved miners.

And again, it is functional, you just don't find it satisfying. "This act is evil" does let a game function, quite easily in fact.



Direct vs indirect changes everything -- it's exactly that indirect and utterly vague nature of the 3.5 "explanation" that calls it into question, while the direct nature of the 5e explanation leaves it far less questionable.

What is the actual risk of a spontaneous undead spawning when the spell is cast, and what is the background rate of undead spawning without the spell ever being cast?

Is the risk each time the spell is cast greater or less than the risk of lighting a town or forest on fire when casting a big fire spell? If it's less, then why isn't the big fire spell considered evil? That's why the actual risk matters. If your reply is just "fire is not like undead", then I'm not sure you've seen what an uncontrolled fire can do, and as noted above, I'd wonder if anything will be enough "like undead" that you won't stonewall the discussion with the same reply of "not like undead".

I genuinely, honestly, truthfully can't think of anything that is. Cars, fire, crystals, and disease certainly aren't.



You can say "if not, you've made up your mind", but so far, everything we've tried to use to examine the asserted standard has just been met with "but that's not like undead", which is starting to sound very much like there's absolutely nothing that will "be like undead" such that your response won't be to just refuse to go into the details.

My point exactly - the only things that are like undead, are undead. Common ground at last.

[Lord Raziere]

My point exactly - the only things that are like undead, are undead. Common ground at last.

Technically robots are like the undead.

just different materials used to make the artificial servant.

[Gallowglass]

"But it wasn't *my* casting of Animate Dead that caused the Apocalypse, so I'm blameless"?

Or "I can't know if anyone across the world died to a spontaneously created undead because I increased the connection between the Prime and the NEP, so I'm blameless"?

Yes, modern laws have some sort of ratio of how much injury a product must cause before it's recalled. Does that mean that letting a product out the door with a known fatal defect chance below that level is morally justified? What if it's just one copy of that product? Does that change the moral or legal repercussions?


I just want to add that I totally want to institute an undead EPA governmental oversight agency that goes around policing undead-creating industries now.

I am seeing the undead equivalent of carbon-offset certificates where necromancers can purchase the right to continue their evil misunderstood ways.

[Psyren]

Technically robots are like the undead.

just different materials used to make the artificial servant.

In D&D anyway, robots constructs lack an inherent craving to end all sapient life, making them doesn't have any impact on the number of uncontrolled evil ones that can be found out in the world, none of them are intelligent or create spawn from their victims, none of them can gain class levels or wrest control of docile ones for their own agenda...

(Well, that last one might not be true, I haven't read every statblock in existence.)

[Gallowglass]

Technically robots are like the undead.

just different materials used to make the artificial servant.

Eh. kind of. Except robots don't require leaking extradimensional poisonous radioactivity into our universe in order to create them. Also, they aren't made out of Grandma's bones.

Grandma! No!


In D&D anyway, robots constructs lack an inherent craving to end all sapient life

Incorrect! All robots seek to kill fleshy-ones. Death to the meat-bags.

[Segev]

Again, Psyren, you're only arguing matters of degree, while insisting that numbers don't matter.

Will "good" be done with the undead animated by this spell? If so, then that good must be measured against the increased risk of evil arising. The very fact that this instantly creates a variable balance of good or evil in the spell's casting is a flaw in the argument that the LM explanation for why it's evil is adequate.

You can simply refrain from driving a car. There's no imperative to do so. You can always move to a city and never have to drive one. Or go live amongst the Amish. And any "but those risks aren't inherently evil!" argument had best be backed by more than "because it's not undead and actively seeking to harm." Because "actively seeking to harm" just translates to increased risk. So it is, again, a numbers argument, which makes your "but the numbers don't matter" argument contradictory.

I use the "undead utopia" (which I dispute would be utopia, but whatever) example because it provides an easier way to gauge a metric for how much good is done per casting. If casting animate dead is inherently evil strictly because of the increased risk that harm will befall somebody, somewhere, in no traceable way back to any particular casting of the spell, then for the numbers to be persuasive, it would have to be pretty high. At least 1:1, if not greater. Enough that the lives saved by the increased prosperity of the nation would be eclipsed by the lives lost to the undead hordes arising uncontrolled and unmitigated by any excess resources of the kingdom going into putting them down.

Enough, therefore, that it would be pretty obvious from spell description what the consequences are, rather than vague and disconnected and not impactful enough that there's zero noteworthy mechanical effect.

[Lord Raziere]

Yes exactly my point.

undead are corpse robots.

the reasons why they are bad is just as arbitrary as robots being bad for reasons like "crush kill destroy" or robots all being powered by uranium or oil when there are other power sources.

you can just switch your power source to PEP and it'll work fine. if a Baelnorn's possible, why not weaker positive undead? similarly why not robots powered by solar energy?

its not as if it isn't a weaker version of something positive energy already does: give people life. if your can do a full resurrect, why would undeath be hard? undeath is just incomplete resurrection so its not as if its different or anything, just less effort.

Edit: if anything it makes LESS sense to use NEP to animate corpses, because why would you logically think an energy used to destroy would be able to give anything any semblance of life? its like using fire to hydrate yourself.

[Quertus]

Tut, tut. You're trying to play a reductio ad absurdum, and hold me to a standard I didn't espouse.

What I said was that evil must in some way amount to negative impact, or it is not meaningful to call it evil. I can't go into the full details of what I believe regarding good and evil, sin and cleansing oneself thereof, etc., without going into real world religion, but suffice it to say that, no, I don't subscribe to any theory which says "If I save enough puppies to more than compensate, I can torture as many orphans to death as I like and still be good."

Which tends to be the absurd consequence that the line of reasoning you're attempting to ascribe to me leads to.

However, that said? If you don't subscribe to some level of benefit/harm balance, then literally any act you take is irredeemably evil, because some negative impact occurs. Especially when you start allowing for "you doing this increases the odds of something bad happening" as potential for an act to be termed "evil."

Is it good to build a dam to secure a lake, control flood stages, and provide power to a nearby city? No, obviously not; it's evil because people die in such construction projects and there will be some negative impact to the wilderness where the lake will grow as the environment changes from "riverside woods" to "lakebed." So clearly, there's nothing to debate; it's inherently evil to do it.

But, of course, that's silly. While I'm sure there are some who would argue the environmental impact is such that it is evil, period, it is also unquestionably a matter of debate in the real world. So either all of mankind is irredeemably evil, or this act is at worst "questionable" because there is something to debate over whether it's evil or not. On the other hand, I think we can all agree that Nazis were unequivacally evil in their treatment of "untermenchen."

I think we can also agree that a device which killed three orphans per cancer patient it cured would be pretty evil to use.

So, to answer Psyren's question, yes, there are numbers which would make me buy it...but those numbers are high enough that the spell itself would provide some and you could easily see the impact. Which is clearly not true in-setting.

Have you...just not read any of my posts where I've spelled out my preferred explanation for why casting animate dead is an evil act? I think it pretty clearly gives a solid indication of what devs could say on the subject to satisfy me. I mean, it may not be the only way to satisfy me, but it WOULD satisfy me. I don't think I'm being unclear or ambiguous, there.

I don't. You're just reading that into what I'm saying, because you're ignoring other parts of it. I honestly don't know how to respond to this any clearer than I have; you're already demonstrating that you haven't understood my best efforts to explain it, or have somehow just not seen it. You haven't responded to it at all.

Short version: I would find animate dead to be believably [evil] if each casting of it caused pain and suffering for the souls of those whose bodies are so violated. (This is greatly simplified from longer explanations, such as an entire post dedicated to the subject on I think the last page.)

Of course it can. But not if the only explanation is a vague increase in potential for bad stuff to happen, somewhere. If you rely on that, you're back to balancing risk/reward. Cost/benefit. For it to be evil regardless of net consequences, there must be evil results directly and indisputably tied to that given casting of the spell.

There's a difference between "ignoring the risk" and "acknowledging and mitigating the risk, but still doing the thing." And that's the trouble.

You can't have inherently evil acts that are merely "risky." You can demonstrate evil by having somebody not care about the risk (to others), but you can't have it just plain be evil to do it at all, or even "regularly," just based on that. Not without a lot of unintended consequences in terms of making other things we don't knee-jerk say "evil" to becoming equally evil. Like driving your car to work each day.

Sorry, I have had others expouse that stance before, and it's the closest thing I'd heard before to what I was hearing you say. But what you're saying now isn't terribly easy to get traction on. So, it must cause harm to be considered evil, but the harm to benefit ratio of the individual action matters. That harm cannot be balanced out by the individual, only by the consequences of the action, to determine if an action is evil or not. But "risk of harm" cannot qualify something as evil.

-----

"It would be evil if it did something entirely unlike what it actually does" is in no way helpful for determining what the devs would have had to explain about the spell for you to agree to its moral label. So, yes, I ignored your completely irrelevant answer. Quite intentionally. It actually wasn't me being senile this time. It was me acknowledging you saying that Animate Dead *should* have the [evil] tag (or, at least, you explicitly not arguing that it shouldn't).

-----

Personally, I have no problem with a moral system saying that driving your car to work is evil. Not saying that I agree, merely that I do not inherently reject it as invalid or incoherent for doing so.

[Segev]

"It would be evil if it did something entirely unlike what it actually does" is in no way helpful for determining what the devs would have had to explain about the spell for you to agree to its moral label. So, yes, I ignored your completely irrelevant answer. Quite intentionally. It actually wasn't me being senile this time. It was me acknowledging you saying that Animate Dead *should* have the [evil] tag (or, at least, you explicitly not arguing that it shouldn't).

How is what I have outlined "entirely unlike what it actually does?"

If anything, "It has this hidden mechanical effect of actually animating more undead, maybe, somewhere else, that isn't listed in the spell description but definitely makes it evil," seems like it's doing something other than what it actually does.

[Brookshw]

Technically robots are like the undead.

just different materials used to make the artificial servant.

Much like creating undead increases Negative energy in the world to negative effect, animating golems from fire elementals increases the risk of forest fires. Artificers, only you can prevent forest fires!

[Quertus]

How is what I have outlined "entirely unlike what it actually does?"

If anything, "It has this hidden mechanical effect of actually animating more undead, maybe, somewhere else, that isn't listed in the spell description but definitely makes it evil," seems like it's doing something other than what it actually does.

I nearly died choking on my food laughing at this. Good one!

Yes, it has side effects that aren't an obvious part of the intended effect. Completely agreed.

What I meant was, the devs intended everything they said it did - effect and side effect - to be sufficient to give the spell the [evil] tag. And you said that the spell *should* have the [evil] tag. So I'm trying to figure out what the devs could say about the spell they built, and the world-building they (maybe) did to bridge the gap.

The issue may be that indirect harm, or risk of harm, was sufficient for them, but insufficient for you, in which case, the answer is "there is nothing that they could say".

However, it is also possible that details of how spontaneous undead, places of evil, and evil artifacts form could convince you. Some might be convinced by "because foo defined evil that way (in the D&D multiverse)". Others might be convinced by numbers - especially if those numbers were "no undead would spontaneously form naturally" and "at least one undead spontaneously forms per casting".

[Psyren]

Incorrect! All robots seek to kill fleshy-ones. Death to the meat-bags.

I said "in D&D" for that exact reason :smallbiggrin:


Again, Psyren, you're only arguing matters of degree, while insisting that numbers don't matter.

Not quite; I think stating the numbers doesn't matter. I've said repeatedly that there is very likely a number, and that number is "enough." What I'm not interested in is a bunch of napkin math that is going to vary widely in terms of subjective individual thresholds anyway.



You can simply refrain from driving a car. There's no imperative to do so. You can always move to a city and never have to drive one. Or go live amongst the Amish.

So you agree it's not a trolley problem then? That's good to hear.



I use the "undead utopia" (which I dispute would be utopia, but whatever) example because it provides an easier way to gauge a metric for how much good is done per casting. If casting animate dead is inherently evil strictly because of the increased risk that harm will befall somebody, somewhere, in no traceable way back to any particular casting of the spell, then for the numbers to be persuasive, it would have to be pretty high. At least 1:1, if not greater. Enough that the lives saved by the increased prosperity of the nation would be eclipsed by the lives lost to the undead hordes arising uncontrolled and unmitigated by any excess resources of the kingdom going into putting them down.

Persuading you is neither their goal nor mine; and even if it were, all undead are not created equal. Let's indulge your ratio for a second. How many animate deads do you think would be worth loosing, say, an extra Bodak on the world? A Dread Wraith? A Greater Shadow? A Nightshade? A Crone Queen? How many would be worth whatever their spawn let in?



Enough, therefore, that it would be pretty obvious from spell description what the consequences are, rather than vague and disconnected and not impactful enough that there's zero noteworthy mechanical effect.

The mechanical effect is that repeated use makes you evil. This is true per BoVD, FC2, and LM.



The issue may be that indirect harm, or risk of harm, was sufficient for them, but insufficient for you, in which case, the answer is "there is nothing that they could say".

I for one am convinced this is the case.

[Max_Killjoy]

And that's totally fine, that's your prerogative. But flatly, I refuse to do the work of finding the magic number that would convince you either, and just as flatly, so should the designers.


They, and you, have made the claim, the burden of convincing anyone that it's a true, useful, or functional claim lies entirely with them, and with you.

"Here's my assertion, it's your job to find the argument in its favor that will convince you" is nonsense.




But you're not applying it at all; you're leaving out crucial details, which are contained in my responses to you. Such as level of necessity (curing disease with your crystals is not analogous to lacks the situational imperative of animating corpses to till a field) and volition (free-willed necromancers are not analogous to lack the situational imperative of enslaved miners.


Those are details of the situation with the necromancy, not details of the standard being applied to each situation.

But it might help the thread to stop fixating on the animated undead being use to till a field, that's never been a great example.

Instead, consider the spellcaster who knows a few necromancer spells because they were in a spellbook he found in a tomb, and it helps him deal with undead to understand these things. He need to repair a dam in the middle of the night with no help, but the workers graveyard is nearby. Does he maintain his "moral purity" by letting the dam collapse and wipe out the town below, or does he animate the undead, fix the bridge, and then "unmake" them (or whatever)?

For those characters who don't give a fig what some moldy deity in a fantasy says is "Good" or "Evil", this is why the question I asked earlier matters. Is it a 0.1% chance per casting to add a single spontaneous undead to the 100 already arising around the world that year, or is it 1+ spontaneous undead every single time the spell is cast? That's not "moral calculus", that's knowing the risk you're running if you save the town from the dam collapsing! An act cannot be evil in isolation, the intent, the context, and the result matter. A spell that carries a tiny risk of doing marginal additional harm is morally different from a spell that is guaranteed to do significant additional harm.




And again, it is functional, you just don't find it satisfying. "This act is evil" does let a game function, quite easily in fact.


It lets a game "function" until the characters run into a moral quandary that's not dirt-simple, or that isn't covered in The Junior Adventure's Book of Dungeoneering Manners.




I genuinely, honestly, truthfully can't think of anything that is. Cars, fire, crystals, and disease certainly aren't.

My point exactly - the only things that are like undead, are undead. Common ground at last.


The problem is that to examine the standard, the other situations do not need to be, maybe shouldn't be, identical.

So the refusal to engage with them because they're "not like undead" just comes across as a refusal to examine the standard at all.




The issue may be that indirect harm, or risk of harm, was sufficient for them, but insufficient for you, in which case, the answer is "there is nothing that they could say".


I don't know if the "indirect harm" would be sufficient, there's a steadfast refusal to give details.




I for one am convinced this is the case.


Which comes across as evading the burden of proof by accusing the people who you'd otherwise be trying to present the case to of having an impossible bar for your arguments to cross.

[Mechalich]

Much like creating undead increases Negative energy in the world to negative effect, animating golems from fire elementals increases the risk of forest fires. Artificers, only you can prevent forest fires!

In the context of D&D morality this is actually important.

Creating undead has an inherently evil component because increasing the amount of negative energy in a given prime world is inherently evil for some reason. Creating a golem using a bound Earth Elemental is not because while that increases the influence of elemental earth on the particular prime world for some reason that's not evil.

The problem is that D&D fluff has, since at least early 2e, worked strongly against the idea of Negative Energy being inherently evil. By the time Planescape came out it was just another plane that happened to be hostile to life, and you could visit it and everything and it was neutrally aligned.

As a result there's a paradox within D&D fluff regarding the undead. The game wants undead and necromancy to be evil because this seems like a thematically appropriate thing and also because it provides cover against the average D&D setting becoming a necropunk world. However, the multiversal fluff that's used to justify moral positions in D&D doesn't match with this position.

The easiest way to square this particular circle is to have it such that, for a given particular game world the God of Undeath - who is crucially not the God of Death - is the worst kind of horror and producing undead inherently strengthens their evil agenda and therefore can be considered evil.

[Lord Raziere]

In the context of D&D morality this is actually important.

Creating undead has an inherently evil component because increasing the amount of negative energy in a given prime world is inherently evil for some reason. Creating a golem using a bound Earth Elemental is not because while that increases the influence of elemental earth on the particular prime world for some reason that's not evil.


I have an idea:
why not just open a positive energy leak into the world at the same time and intensity as the negative energy leak, and just letting it diffuse rather than use it for anything, to balance out the scales? because positive counters negative, therefore a modified spell that just does that would in theory take care of the problem by keeping the ratios balanced.

the morality doesn't make sense, but the lack of engineering to fix this arguably makes even less sense.

also inflict light wounds is literally injecting negative energy into somebody through your hand, how does that not ping as evil, if increasing negative energy in the world is evil? shouldn't inflict light wounds affect the balance? why does it affect the balance when it specifically animates DEAD things but not hurt things that are STILL ALIVE? makes no sense.

[Max_Killjoy]

I suppose a person of faith would argue with you that the God(s) don't need to explain their reasoning to you behind the rules and laws they expect you to abide by.

It wouldn't be hard to imagine that there may be more behind your scenario than what you understand. To you, you see a choice between saving 1000 people and killing 1 "madman" who wants to blow up a dam. To the gods they see that, if that dam blows and those 1000 people die, it also kills off an emerging viral threat that, if left unchecked, would kill millions.

"But surely there's a better way to check that viral threat?" Sure, I'm just giving it as a possibility and to illustrate that you could assume a good faith effort by the Gods to be.... if not benevolent, then at least non-capricious caretakers of the fabric of the universe. And that their rules must serve a purpose even if its unclear to us and that they don't owe us an explanation.

But if you choose to believe the Gods are capricious and refuse to accept that they have such a good faith effort, then you'll never be convinced otherwise. But not because the argument isn't valid, because you are stubborn in your refusal to accept you don't know everything and don't get to know everything. You don't want to be proven wrong so you will never accept an argument that does so as valid. As stubborn, in your own way, as this theoretical person of faith is in their insistence that the God(s) in question have a plan and reason for their immutable decrees in the first place.

I'm not a person of faith, so I'm not the right person to argue with you on that though. Gods suck. Especially fantasy game Gods who are universally ********s.

However, you have an extreme false equivalence in your argument.

Having to make a choice to kill 1 madman to save 1000 people when Tarm says "killing is bad" is a world of difference away from Tarm saying "making undead is bad" and you saying "but its such a convenient tool, how could I choose to use a different spell instead."


"OH my Tarm, the dam has a leak and its going to collapse! Quick" *summons zombie, tells it to stick a finger in the hole.* "There, fixed!"

"Uh, you could've just put a stick or something in there."

"Nope. Fixed! Undead are tools for good!"

Why choose a scenario that's deliberately ridiculous?

"Oh my Tarm, the dam is about to collapse, it's well after last bell, and no one is around... if I don't fix it immediately the town will be wiped away, and it would take at least a dozen workers!"

But then, I also find the whole "but what if that town needed to be wiped out and you just couldn't understand the bigger picture?" thing to be utterly contrived and vapid, and ironic when used in defense of the same gods who evidently assert that killing 1 person to save 1000, or raising a few skeletons for a couple hours to save 1000, is still an evil act, regardless of the bigger picture of how many lives are saved. I guess it's true that most fantasy-setting gods don't actually give a darn about mortals.


And if you're going to accuse me of things like "You don't want to be proven wrong so you will never accept an argument that does so as valid", please don't even bother responding to my posts.





In the context of D&D morality this is actually important.

Creating undead has an inherently evil component because increasing the amount of negative energy in a given prime world is inherently evil for some reason. Creating a golem using a bound Earth Elemental is not because while that increases the influence of elemental earth on the particular prime world for some reason that's not evil.

The problem is that D&D fluff has, since at least early 2e, worked strongly against the idea of Negative Energy being inherently evil. By the time Planescape came out it was just another plane that happened to be hostile to life, and you could visit it and everything and it was neutrally aligned.

As a result there's a paradox within D&D fluff regarding the undead. The game wants undead and necromancy to be evil because this seems like a thematically appropriate thing and also because it provides cover against the average D&D setting becoming a necropunk world. However, the multiversal fluff that's used to justify moral positions in D&D doesn't match with this position.

The easiest way to square this particular circle is to have it such that, for a given particular game world the God of Undeath - who is crucially not the God of Death - is the worst kind of horror and producing undead inherently strengthens their evil agenda and therefore can be considered evil.



I have an idea:
why not just open a positive energy leak into the world at the same time and intensity as the negative energy leak, and just letting it diffuse rather than use it for anything, to balance out the scales? because positive counters negative, therefore a modified spell that just does that would in theory take care of the problem by keeping the ratios balanced.

the morality doesn't make sense, but the lack of engineering to fix this arguably makes even less sense.

also inflict light wounds is literally injecting negative energy into somebody through your hand, how does that not ping as evil, if increasing negative energy in the world is evil? shouldn't inflict light wounds affect the balance? why does it affect the balance when it specifically animates DEAD things but not hurt things that are STILL ALIVE? makes no sense.


Thus the trap of "just so" one-by-one moral assertions.

WOTC: "Animate Dead is 'EVIL'."
Gamer: "Why?"
WOTC: "Because aesthetics and tropes... and we said so."
Gamer: "No, seriously."
WOTC: "Because... it causes negative energy to leak into the material plane, which causes bad stuff to happen, because evil."
Gamer: "But what about all these other spells that expressly and directly inject negative energy into the material plane? And didn't you say in these other books that negative energy isn't inherently evil?"
WOTC: "Um... BECAUSE WE SAID SO! AND THE GODS!"

[Koo Rehtorb]

An act cannot be evil in isolation, the intent, the context, and the result matter.

Except it can, and is, in D&D morality. If you animate labourers to fix a dam and save a town, and there was no other conceivable way of doing so, and you save hundreds of lives, it is still an evil act. But it may be an evil act that's worth doing, even if doing so does stain your soul with evil in the process.

It doesn't matter if you find that unsatisfying and unrealistic. That's how it works in D&D. If you don't like it then I suggest removing alignment as the trash concept it is, or just accepting that the universe may label you evil for following a different moral code than is hardwired into D&D reality.

Edit - also, side note, the gods don't decide the metaphysics of good and evil. Alignment transcends the gods and is built into the fabric of the universe itself.

[Psyren]

They, and you, have made the claim, the burden of convincing anyone that it's a true, useful, or functional claim lies entirely with them, and with you.

I don't need to "convince" you that it's true, it's right there on the page in the rulebook, you can go read it yourself.

"Useful" is subjective and entirely up to you. You can houserule all kinds of things you don't find useful, there's nothing wrong with it.

"Functional" - given that they've made animating undead evil for at least 3 editions now, the functionality is evident. If it weren't functional they've have chucked it, especially with 5e having actually re-examined so many of the other sacred cows. They left it in for a reason.



Those are details of the situation with the necromancy, not details of the standard being applied to each situation.

But it might help the thread to stop fixating on the animated undead being use to till a field, that's never been a great example.

Instead, consider the spellcaster who knows a few necromancer spells because they were in a spellbook he found in a tomb, and it helps him deal with undead to understand these things. He need to repair a dam in the middle of the night with no help, but the workers graveyard is nearby. Does he maintain his "moral purity" by letting the dam collapse and wipe out the town below, or does he animate the undead, fix the bridge, and then "unmake" them (or whatever)?
...
It lets a game "function" until the characters run into a moral quandary that's not dirt-simple, or that isn't covered in The Junior Adventure's Book of Dungeoneering Manners.

I covered this already: "If you believe it to be a necessary evil, you do it anyway, and then make amends..."

I find it beyond odd that you want both "moral quandaries" and a character who is 100% pure for some reason. If you think an evil act is necessary to save the day, you're free to do it, it's not like you're a paladin.



For those characters who don't give a fig what some moldy deity in a fantasy says is "Good" or "Evil", this is why the question I asked earlier matters.

If your character doesn't care what a deity thinks, then go nuts. It's not like you're a paladin.



The problem is that to examine the standard, the other situations do not need to be, maybe shouldn't be, identical.
So the refusal to engage with them because they're "not like undead" just comes across as a refusal to examine the standard at all.

There is no value in engaging with a non sequitur.



I don't know if the "indirect harm" would be sufficient, there's a steadfast refusal to give details.
...
Which comes across as evading the burden of proof by accusing the people who you'd otherwise be trying to present the case to of having an impossible bar for your arguments to cross.

Is there a number that would satisfy you? If yes, that's it. If no, then it doesn't matter.



Gamer: "But what about all these other spells that expressly and directly inject negative energy into the material plane? And didn't you say in these other books that negative energy isn't inherently evil?"

Which ones aren't evil and create entities that ceaselessly seek to end sapient life if left to their own devices? Which ones aren't evil and create entities that are "a constant drain on the energies of the material plane?"

[Max_Killjoy]

Except it can, and is, in D&D morality. If you animate labourers to fix a dam and save a town, and there was no other conceivable way of doing so, and you save hundreds of lives, it is still an evil act. But it may be an evil act that's worth doing, even if doing so does stain your soul with evil in the process.

It doesn't matter if you find that unsatisfying and unrealistic. That's how it works in D&D. If you don't like it then I suggest removing alignment as the trash concept it is, or just accepting that the universe may label you evil for following a different moral code than is hardwired into D&D reality.

Edit - also, side note, the gods don't decide the metaphysics of good and evil. Alignment transcends the gods and is built into the fabric of the universe itself.


And that's where we get right back to the fact that 'Evil' isn't evil, and 'Good' isn't good, just the same words used for different unrelated things, and the "cosmic forces" might as well be called "purple" and "sideways".

The idea that saving 1000 lives by killing the person about to murder them all, or raising a few skeletons for a couple hours, would "stain your soul" is nonsense, and I'm going to keep calling it nonsense every time it comes up.




I don't need to "convince" you that it's true, it's right there on the page in the rulebook, you can go read it yourself.


The people who wrote the book made the claim, now they need to back it up with something that isn't a vague assertion of indirect harm of unknown risk and severity.

"It's in the book" is just another version of "because we said so". They made an assertion about their setting, it's on them to provide the underpinnings that make that assertion true.




"Functional" - given that they've made animating undead evil for at least 3 editions now, the functionality is evident. If it weren't functional they've have chucked it, especially with 5e having actually re-examined so many of the other sacred cows. They left it in for a reason.


First of all... HA! OK, sure, "it's in the books, it must be there for a reason". Hah.

Second, again, I do not care about the specific "undead are evil" assertion, I care about the standard by which they are asserting it's evil, and whether that standard holds up, and whether the underpinnings of that standard are then consistently applied to and mesh with the rest of the setting.

So far, the answers are "nope" and "nope".




I covered this already: "If you believe it to be a necessary evil, you do it anyway, and then make amends..."

I find it beyond odd that you want both "moral quandaries" and a character who is 100% pure for some reason. If you think an evil act is necessary to save the day, you're free to do it, it's not like you're a paladin.


Because the question isn't "is this a necessary evil", the question is "is this evil?" -- and by the standard you're presenting, saving the 1000 people in town is an evil act if the character does it by summoning a few skeletons for a couple hours, or killing one enemy agent.

Which makes no damn sense outside of the bizarro "morality" of a crapsack setting.




There is no value in engaging with a non sequitur.


Nice dodge attempt, but you rolled a 1 again.




Is there a number that would satisfy you? If yes, that's it. If no, then it doesn't matter.


First, you're maybe still stuck on the idea that this is simply about the specific example of Animate Dead, rather than trying to examine the standard by which an act can supposedly be evil regardless of the intent, context, or results.

Second "whatever number will satisfy you" is not an answer, and it's not proof, and it's not an argument.




Which ones aren't evil and create entities that ceaselessly seek to end sapient life if left to their own devices? Which ones aren't evil and create entities that are "a constant drain on the energies of the material plane?"


So first it was "adds to the negative energy on the material plane", now it's actually "creates etc".

OK.

[Koo Rehtorb]

And that's where we get right back to the fact that 'Evil' isn't evil, and 'Good' isn't good, just the same words used for different unrelated things, and the "cosmic forces" might as well be called "purple" and "sideways".

So? D&D isn't an ethics textbook.

I don't think you get to unilaterally declare that consequentialist morality is objectively and unquestionably correct, though. I mean, I agree with you, but plenty of people don't. One could conceive of a universe in which this is not the case.

[Talakeal]

WOTC: "Animate Dead is 'EVIL'."
Gamer: "Why?"
WOTC: "Because aesthetics and tropes... and we said so."
Gamer: "No, seriously."
WOTC: "Because... it causes negative energy to leak into the material plane, which causes bad stuff to happen, because evil."
Gamer: "But what about all these other spells that expressly and directly inject negative energy into the material plane? And didn't you say in these other books that negative energy isn't inherently evil?"
WOTC: "Um... BECAUSE WE SAID SO! AND THE GODS!"

I agree with you, but "gods" isn't actually an excuse D&D uses. Every D&D setting I am aware of, says that morality is an intrinsic universal force that the gods have no say over. Paladins and clerics of a cause, for example, get their powers from universal forces that are beyond the gods.

[Anymage]

They, and you, have made the claim, the burden of convincing anyone that it's a true, useful, or functional claim lies entirely with them, and with you.

"Here's my assertion, it's your job to find the argument in its favor that will convince you" is nonsense.

On this specific point, I do have to say that there are plenty of times when it's best that the books don't give a clear answer. Sometimes that's to give room for individual DMs to adjust to taste. Sometimes it's because we really don't need detailed rules for simulating necromantic pollution in our dungeoneering adventure game. Sometimes the game mentions a ritual "of unspeakable evil", and it's better to fade to black than to give graphic descriptions of gruesome tortures.

I think it's clear that I prefer the 5e method of making undead morally dubious over the 3.5 method. But if we were in a setting like Exalted where necromantic pollution was a strongly established fact of the setting, I'd still rather many specifics be left in the DM's hands so he can decide how much or how little he wants it to be a major campaign element.


Except it can, and is, in D&D morality. If you animate labourers to fix a dam and save a town, and there was no other conceivable way of doing so, and you save hundreds of lives, it is still an evil act. But it may be an evil act that's worth doing, even if doing so does stain your soul with evil in the process.

It doesn't matter if you find that unsatisfying and unrealistic. That's how it works in D&D. If you don't like it then I suggest removing alignment as the trash concept it is, or just accepting that the universe may label you evil for following a different moral code than is hardwired into D&D reality.

Edit - also, side note, the gods don't decide the metaphysics of good and evil. Alignment transcends the gods and is built into the fabric of the universe itself.

Even if we accept that alignment is hardcoded into the setting's metaphysics and beyond all but the greatest overdeities, that doesn't mean that the world is strictly deontological and bound by clearly defined rules. If the cosmological alignments are so strictly deontological, the specific rules could easily include that murdering redheads is Good and that eating broccoli is Evil. If it's just a list of rules, it isn't reasonable to expect them to match up to our ideas of morality or even make sense. And when game authors try to give concrete rules for problems that have plagued centuries of great minds, you can expect them to make a hash of it.

We could make a system designed around exploring the mindsets of people with moral codes very different from your average player. I don't think D&D in any edition is really the system for that.

[Max_Killjoy]

So? D&D isn't an ethics textbook.

I don't think you get to unilaterally declare that consequentialist morality is objectively and unquestionably correct, though. I mean, I agree with you, but plenty of people don't. One could conceive of a universe in which this is not the case.

I can conceive of an immoral universe. I cannot conceive of a universe in which morality is objectively different.

(Wouldn't call where I'm coming from strictly consequentialist, though, as intent and context and issues of imperfect knowledge play into the thing as well, not just the results of the action -- an action that accidentally does good when the intent was to do harm, is not automatically moral.)




On this specific point, I do have to say that there are plenty of times when it's best that the books don't give a clear answer. Sometimes that's to give room for individual DMs to adjust to taste. Sometimes it's because we really don't need detailed rules for simulating necromantic pollution in our dungeoneering adventure game. Sometimes the game mentions a ritual "of unspeakable evil", and it's better to fade to black than to give graphic descriptions of gruesome tortures.

I think it's clear that I prefer the 5e method of making undead morally dubious over the 3.5 method. But if we were in a setting like Exalted where necromantic pollution was a strongly established fact of the setting, I'd still rather many specifics be left in the DM's hands so he can decide how much or how little he wants it to be a major campaign element.


I totally get that, but there are these times when it's "this is absolute, no exceptions, no questions...", and then when asked for details, it's "whatever details would make it work out to be true in your mind"... it comes across as coy, and evasive, and a complete cop-out. See, the aforementioned "liches are always evil" thing... because they have to do horrible things, supposedly, but when you say "really, like what?", the answer is this coy non-answer of "whatever you can imagine that's horrible enough that you'd consider it unforgiveably evil".




Even if we accept that alignment is hardcoded into the setting's metaphysics and beyond all but the greatest overdeities, that doesn't mean that the world is strictly deontological and bound by clearly defined rules. If the cosmological alignments are so strictly deontological, the specific rules could easily include that murdering redheads is Good and that eating broccoli is Evil. If it's just a list of rules, it isn't reasonable to expect them to match up to our ideas of morality or even make sense. And when game authors try to give concrete rules for problems that have plagued centuries of great minds, you can expect them to make a hash of it.

We could make a system designed around exploring the mindsets of people with moral codes very different from your average player. I don't think D&D in any edition is really the system for that.


IMO, if it's just a list of rules, there's no reason to expect it to be moral in the first place.

[Satinavian]

I covered this already: "If you believe it to be a necessary evil, you do it anyway, and then make amends..."

I don't see a reason to "make amends" for something that was the right thing to do. Good and Evil are only cosmic forces not moral guidelines. Who cares which action is linked to which force aside from people who want to channel those forces ?

Good is not good and Evil is not evil in D&D. And how necromancy is treated is one of the things that make this more obvious.

[hamishspence]

The idea that saving 1000 lives by killing the person about to murder them all, or raising a few skeletons for a couple hours, would "stain your soul" is nonsense

And BoVD specifically states that killing somebody who is about to commit mass murder is not an evil act.

So does BoED for that matter. "Violence is acceptable when it is directed at stopping evil acts or preventing evil acts from being done."

[Kaptin Keen]

So ... I like symmetry.

Is there also a Good of Lawful Evil? Because frankly (symmetry be damned) I consider that a much more interesting prospect. It helps me build interesting villains.

[Quertus]

I have an idea:
why not just open a positive energy leak into the world at the same time and intensity as the negative energy leak,

the morality doesn't make sense, but the lack of engineering to fix this arguably makes even less sense.

Kaboom!

That's why.


Second "whatever number will satisfy you" is not an answer, and it's not proof, and it's not an argument.

Fine. Then let me give you the number. Are you ready? The number is infinity. Happy now?


So? D&D isn't an ethics textbook.

I don't think you get to unilaterally declare that consequentialist morality is objectively and unquestionably correct, though. I mean, I agree with you, but plenty of people don't. One could conceive of a universe in which this is not the case.

Could one? What would have to change about the universe to change morality?

Because this was really a sticking point earlier, where the claim was that morality was a multiversal constant.


I agree with you, but "gods" isn't actually an excuse D&D uses. Every D&D setting I am aware of, says that morality is an intrinsic universal force that the gods have no say over. Paladins and clerics of a cause, for example, get their powers from universal forces that are beyond the gods.

Dang. 4 decades of characters on quixotic quests. I guess now, their goals need to be to destroy the universe, and rebuild a better one. Snap!


We could make a system designed around exploring the mindsets of people with moral codes very different from your average player. I don't think D&D in any edition is really the system for that.

I've found it to be a great system for "exploring the mindsets of people with moral codes very different from you". Or the rest of those words, too.


I totally get that, but there are these times when it's "this is absolute, no exceptions, no questions...", and then when asked for details, it's "whatever details would make it work out to be true in your mind"... it comes across as coy, and evasive, and a complete cop-out. See, the aforementioned "liches are always evil" thing... because they have to do horrible things, supposedly, but when you say "really, like what?", the answer is this coy non-answer of "whatever you can imagine that's horrible enough that you'd consider it unforgiveably evil".

No, D&D originally gave an answer - it involved eating dead babies you'd poisoned, among other things.

Is the game really worse for not having idiots following the recipe IRL?


And BoVD specifically states that killing somebody who is about to commit mass murder is not an evil act.

So does BoED for that matter. "Violence is acceptable when it is directed at stopping evil acts or preventing evil acts from being done."

If anything were to leave a stain on one's soul…


So ... I like symmetry.

Is there also a Good of Lawful Evil? Because frankly (symmetry be damned) I consider that a much more interesting prospect. It helps me build interesting villains.

Well, of course there is. Lawful Evil is the greatest good. Honorable, no moral compunctions to get in the way of party or social unity. Also probably has the best PR and legal departments.

[Brookshw]

In the context of D&D morality this is actually important.


Not so important that I can't joke about it.

And, no, it's not important in the slightest. Yet another person dislikes the undead = Evil rule. Super and irrelevant. The rules are clear. People can dislike the fluff or crunch, that's fine, but that's utterly unimportant since where such dislike occurs it can be addressed via house rules like every else does. This isn't some "the rules aren't broken if they can be house ruled" situation. The rules aren't broken, they work fine.

Instead we get annoying arguments about how the designers need to provide better justifications for the rules. And those arguments are misguided. If you're playing Paranoia do you need justification why something is ranked above your security clearance? Nope. In Call of Cthulhu do you need justification why something requires a madness check? Nope. Even within the scope of D&D, do you need justification for why flying tanks breath fire? Nope. Insisting that you need an explanation for how or why things work the way they do in a game of make believe is strange to begin with, but then to complain about it is just ridiculous.

Sure, some people find it messes with their immersion or doesn't fit their moral codes. So what? House rule it or accept it, there's no middle ground, just endless arguments echoing throughout the internet.

I'm a Planescape fanboy and have been since it was released and I'll happily admit that nothing about that setting or D&D morality is hurt by Undead = Evil. Nothing. Did the Evil for a greater purpose? Good for you, it was still Evil. It might have been justified but it's still Evil, same way that murder is murder even if it's carried out in justified self defense. Here, unlike other moral/criminal offenses, D&D doesn't provide defenses for Undead creation so you're stuck with the rule. Call it strict liability or simply that D&D law doesn't recognize any affirmative defenses. You get dirt on your soul/alignment/whatever.

[hamishspence]

If anything were to leave a stain on one's soul…

... then just violence, cannot be it. Because D&D, especially in its basic dungeon-crawling context, is a game that revolves around "acceptable violence". Combined with paladins Falling for any Evil act, the only way for paladins to function in a typical D&D adventure, is for violence to be, in certain contexts, Not Evil.

"Magic with the Evil descriptor" being more soul staining than "acceptable violence" is, makes sense in that D&D context.

[Quertus]

... then just violence, cannot be it. Because D&D, especially in its basic dungeon-crawling context, is a game that revolves around "acceptable violence". Combined with paladins Falling for any Evil act, the only way for paladins to function in a typical D&D adventure, is for violence to be, in certain contexts, Not Evil.

"Magic with the Evil descriptor" being more soul staining than "acceptable violence" is, makes sense in that D&D context.

Not "just violence" - doing something that you know to be inherently wrong, even if it's for the greater good.

Assuming, of course, that you know that the taking of sentient life is wrong. "That's... that's actually murder, one of the worst crimes of all. Also illegal"

[hamishspence]

doing something that you know to be inherently wrong, even if it's for the greater good.

Assuming, of course, that you know that the taking of sentient life is wrong. "That's... that's actually murder, one of the worst crimes of all. Also illegal"



The taking of sentient life that is actively trying to kill you, without provocation, is not "inherently wrong." Similar principle applies to defence of others, as does to defence of self.

The alignment of many acts is extremely context-sensitive.

To qualify as murder, "lethal violence" must fulfil certain criteria.

[Kaptin Keen]

Well, of course there is. Lawful Evil is the greatest good. Honorable, no moral compunctions to get in the way of party or social unity. Also probably has the best PR and legal departments.

A friend of mine - as a teenager, so don't hold it against him - used to rant about 'Friendly Fascism'. Exemplified primarily by all the ruthless brutality of a police state, but only 'for your own good'. So the state wouldn't mind your free thinking seen in isolation, but as a disruptive force working against the smooth operation of society, it wasn't in everyone's best interest. Hence, the secret police would round you up, beat the living crap out of you, patch up your wounds, and return you home with a friendly 'glad we had this chat to clear the air - now don't let it happen again, you rascal!'

And you'd be on the floor, wheezing out 'thank you, officer.'

[PhoenixPhyre]

A friend of mine - as a teenager, so don't hold it against him - used to rant about 'Friendly Fascism'. Exemplified primarily by all the ruthless brutality of a police state, but only 'for your own good'. So the state wouldn't mind your free thinking seen in isolation, but as a disruptive force working against the smooth operation of society, it wasn't in everyone's best interest. Hence, the secret police would round you up, beat the living crap out of you, patch up your wounds, and return you home with a friendly 'glad we had this chat to clear the air - now don't let it happen again, you rascal!'

And you'd be on the floor, wheezing out 'thank you, officer.'

Brings to mind a quote from CS Lewis:


“Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

In much smaller ways (not at the state level), I've found this to be pretty true.

[Talakeal]

And BoVD specifically states that killing somebody who is about to commit mass murder is not an evil act.

So does BoED for that matter. "Violence is acceptable when it is directed at stopping evil acts or preventing evil acts from being done."

D&D is a game based around combat, so the same books that condemn necromancy and poison use also bend themselves into loops trying to justify violence.

[Segev]

I nearly died choking on my food laughing at this. Good one!

Yes, it has side effects that aren't an obvious part of the intended effect. Completely agreed.

What I meant was, the devs intended everything they said it did - effect and side effect - to be sufficient to give the spell the [evil] tag. And you said that the spell *should* have the [evil] tag. So I'm trying to figure out what the devs could say about the spell they built, and the world-building they (maybe) did to bridge the gap.

The issue may be that indirect harm, or risk of harm, was sufficient for them, but insufficient for you, in which case, the answer is "there is nothing that they could say".

However, it is also possible that details of how spontaneous undead, places of evil, and evil artifacts form could convince you. Some might be convinced by "because foo defined evil that way (in the D&D multiverse)". Others might be convinced by numbers - especially if those numbers were "no undead would spontaneously form naturally" and "at least one undead spontaneously forms per casting".Given the way it's presented, I'm pretty sure the devs actually intended it to be evil for aesthetic reasons, and scrambled a bit to provide an ad hoc explanation years later in the undead-focused book. And did a poor job coming up with a convincing one.

There is a level of "indirect" harm that would convince me, but that level is so high that you can't have the D&D setting as presented and have it work out. The spell would have to have notable impact at least a plurality of the time it's cast. Because anything short of that makes "what are you doing with it?" a much more valid question than the setting wants to be asking.

It's clear their INTENT is that the spell be "icky, but not so icky that a Good person would refrain from casting it if the situation was dire enough." They pretty much spell this out. The trouble is, a lot of good can be done with it, and if the only cost is, essentially, "magical pollution" that causes harm in sufficient quantities, the amount of harm caused per animate dead-unit of "magical polution" has to be immense enough to be notable and genuinely make casting it even once impactful beyond what you're using it for, and in a notable way.


Not quite; I think stating the numbers doesn't matter. I've said repeatedly that there is very likely a number, and that number is "enough." What I'm not interested in is a bunch of napkin math that is going to vary widely in terms of subjective individual thresholds anyway.I'm not really trying to get exact values. You've asked what it would take to convince me, and I've answered in broad terms (but still more specifically than you've been willing to go): Enough that the spell would have a greater visible impact on the setting than it clearly does, and probably enough that its ancillary, negative effects are spelled out in the spell."


So you agree it's not a trolley problem then? That's good to hear.With your refusal to extrapolate any example into an analogous one for purposes of examination, sure, I'll agree it's not a trolley problem. (Note that there is a difference between refusing to extrapolate, as you do, and refuting the analogy, which would involve detailing how it doesn't apply rather than asserting that any difference is clearly enough to invalidate it.) Me, I see it as a trolley problem because the harm caused by refusing to engage with an aspect of modern life, e.g. a car, is actually serious enough that choosing to do nothing is still choosing to increase potential harm to the world. Given how I choose to live my life, it's also clear that I view refusing to regularly drive a car as decreasing the net good I can do in the world by a greater amoung than would be counterbalanced by the reduced risk of harm entering it I contribute by my driving.


Persuading you is neither their goal nor mine;Then...what is your goal? What is theirs? If persuading us that their setting makes sense isn't important, why bother with an explanation at all, when they clearly created it just to justify the extant rule?


and even if it were, all undead are not created equal. Let's indulge your ratio for a second. How many animate deads do you think would be worth loosing, say, an extra Bodak on the world? A Dread Wraith? A Greater Shadow? A Nightshade? A Crone Queen? How many would be worth whatever their spawn let in?How many animate deads does it take to free up enough people from subsistance farming to have a high enough level party to take down these threats?

I mean, listen to your own question, here: if animate dead really can cause these things to arise through repeated use, this would be detectable and would also mean that every caster who uses it regularly would have a grand and notable impact on the setting! This isn't trivial. You still can't have it both ways: You can't have it at once create these legions of horrifying undead and have the setting not be visibly changed by the addition of even one caster who uses it regularly. And we clearly do have a setting that is not so visibly changed.


The mechanical effect is that repeated use makes you evil. This is true per BoVD, FC2, and LM.So your argument is that "evil" is not in any way connected to the English meaning of the term, and is just a label. I can make a paragon of what the English-speaking world would agree is a good person, and have him be horrifically steeped in D&D evil, because there exists a mechanism to become evil while doing a lot of benevolent stuff and never hurting anybody.

[hamishspence]

D&D is a game based around combat, so the same books that condemn necromancy and poison use also bend themselves into loops trying to justify violence.

Even if you stick to Core, there's a strong presumption that violence Does Not Always Qualify as Evil - because the game is based around combat.

[Max_Killjoy]

Not so important that I can't joke about it.

And, no, it's not important in the slightest. Yet another person dislikes the undead = Evil rule. Super and irrelevant. The rules are clear. People can dislike the fluff or crunch, that's fine, but that's utterly unimportant since where such dislike occurs it can be addressed via house rules like every else does. This isn't some "the rules aren't broken if they can be house ruled" situation. The rules aren't broken, they work fine.

Instead we get annoying arguments about how the designers need to provide better justifications for the rules. And those arguments are misguided. If you're playing Paranoia do you need justification why something is ranked above your security clearance? Nope. In Call of Cthulhu do you need justification why something requires a madness check? Nope. Even within the scope of D&D, do you need justification for why flying tanks breath fire? Nope. Insisting that you need an explanation for how or why things work the way they do in a game of make believe is strange to begin with, but then to complain about it is just ridiculous.

Sure, some people find it messes with their immersion or doesn't fit their moral codes. So what? House rule it or accept it, there's no middle ground, just endless arguments echoing throughout the internet.

I'm a Planescape fanboy and have been since it was released and I'll happily admit that nothing about that setting or D&D morality is hurt by Undead = Evil. Nothing. Did the Evil for a greater purpose? Good for you, it was still Evil. It might have been justified but it's still Evil, same way that murder is murder even if it's carried out in justified self defense. Here, unlike other moral/criminal offenses, D&D doesn't provide defenses for Undead creation so you're stuck with the rule. Call it strict liability or simply that D&D law doesn't recognize any affirmative defenses. You get dirt on your soul/alignment/whatever.

At least when it comes to Segev and I, the problem we have -- and again, I think we've spelled this out a dozen times now --is not really specifically that Animate Undead has the tag "Evil", but rather the standard given for why it has that tag in one specific source, and how that same standard does not seem to be applied across the board. That is, the standard appears to exist only in isolation to retro-explain a single thing that the writer wanted to be true in the setting, and doesn't apply to anything else.

As for "you don't need a reason", your examples seem to somewhat conflate character-level in-setting knowledge, with player-level game-system knowledge. The character in a Paranoia game not knowing why something is rated about their clearance, versus the designers of a game refusing to give straight answers about rules and setting intentions and decisions, are two entirely different things.

Now, if we're going to talk about "affirmative defense", based on how you used the term, I want to make sure you understand that the "affirmative" part of affirmative defense refers to the way in which the burden of proof shifts to the defense to prove that the conditions of that defense have been met -- see, self defense, justifiable homocide, etc. And while we're on definitions, killing someone is specifically not "murder" if one of those defenses is met, or the prosecution fails to prove that the killing was in fact murder, rather than a lesser offense. "Murder" is a specific thing, and "justifiable murder" is an oxymoron.

[Psyren]

The people who wrote the book made the claim, now they need to back it up with something that isn't a vague assertion of indirect harm of unknown risk and severity.

They need to do no such thing. As you yourself just admitted, they made an assertion that backs it up - you can either accept that, or not. How specific it is is irrelevant.



Because the question isn't "is this a necessary evil", the question is "is this evil?" -- and by the standard you're presenting, saving the 1000 people in town is an evil act if the character does it by summoning a few skeletons for a couple hours, or killing one enemy agent.

Which makes no damn sense outside of the bizarro "morality" of a crapsack setting.

You're assuming that animating those few skeletons for a couple of hours would mean you get condemned to a neutral or lower plane. You don't have to be perfect to still keep your alignment you know.

But if you're doing it routinely, then you're hardly "summoning a few skeletons for a couple hours," now, are you?



Nice dodge attempt, but you rolled a 1 again.

"Here's a situation that has glaring flaws keeping it from being even close to a useful approximation to animating undead, please ignore all those and engage with it" is a waste of time, sorry. I don't even need to roll when you're swinging in a different zip code entirely.




First, you're maybe still stuck on the idea that this is simply about the specific example of Animate Dead, rather than trying to examine the standard by which an act can supposedly be evil regardless of the intent, context, or results.

Second "whatever number will satisfy you" is not an answer, and it's not proof, and it's not an argument.

Both the designers and myself HAVE addressed intent, context, and results. All they didn't provide you was math, which is not required.



So first it was "adds to the negative energy on the material plane", now it's actually "creates etc".

OK.

It's both. Do you even know what undead are? :smallconfused:

[Max_Killjoy]

They need to do no such thing. As you yourself just admitted, they made an assertion that backs it up - you can either accept that, or not. How specific it is is irrelevant.


Um... I "admitted" what now?

I said that they needed to do something they didn't do, that's not an "admission" that they did the thing.




You're assuming that animating those few skeletons for a couple of hours would mean you get condemned to a neutral or lower plane. You don't have to be perfect to still keep your alignment you know.

But if you're doing it routinely, then you're hardly "summoning a few skeletons for a couple hours," now, are you?


OK, seriously, could you stop trying to put words in my mouth? I didn't say anything about alignment changes or afterlife destinations in this discussion, did I? I don't care about either of those things here. If you really think this is about either of those things, then you're making an entirely unfounded assumption.

Then again, you keep insisting that this is only and simply about the Animate Dead spell getting an "Evil" tag in isolation -- when myself and other posters have repeatedly said that it's not -- so I'm not sure how much of that is "mistaken assumption" and how much is... something else.

This is about the standard by which Animate Dead is being tagged "Evil" -- its ad hoc application to only a handful of setting elements, the clear lack of application of the same standard to other setting elements, and the frankly insulting and belittling way that we're being told that we must accept that of course just that spell and a few others violate that standard, and that if we can't then it's a failure of imagination on our part.

And it's about refuting, as morally bankrupt, the nonsense idea that saving 1000 people can be an EVIL action even if no harm is done, or only the person trying to kill them is harmed.




"Here's a situation that has glaring flaws keeping it from being even close to a useful approximation to animating undead, please ignore all those and engage with it" is a waste of time, sorry. I don't even need to roll when you're swinging in a different zip code entirely.


What we've been asking is, "by the standard you're using to say Animate Dead is "Evil", would these other things be "Evil?" -- and you've been rejecting them as "not enough like Animated Undead". "Enough like Animated Undead" is entirely your bugbear, and one that increasing comes across as simply a way to evade examining the standard as a standard instead of as an ad-hoc justification for a desired isolated element.

At least for me, I'm not trying to justify animating a lot of undead... I'm trying to demonstrate that the "standard" by which a few particular authors, and now you in their stead, are justifying the "EVIL" tag, is broken and insufficient and contradictory to other elements of the setting -- and that the "evil no matter what" tag is morally bankrupt if it says "saving 1000 innocent lives can be an "evil" action".

NOTE that I have said I'm fine with 5e's position on Animate Undead, because doesn't drag in a vague ad-hoc un-standard in the attempt to make something "EVIL" instead of "risky in a way such that repeatedly using it indicates a strong chance of evilness". So clearly, I am not trying to make the undead a clean and wholesome part of your fantasy setting's economic structure.




Both the designers and myself HAVE addressed intent, context, and results. All they didn't provide you was math, which is not required.


I must have missed those posts. What I have seen is:

X: "Why is Animate Undead tagged EVIL?"
P: "Because it risks bad things happening in the world via leaking negative energy."
X: "How big is that risk, and how does it compare to the background risk."
P: "It's bad enough to be earn the EVIL tag."
X: "That's circular reasoning, and not an answer."
P: "We don't owe you any answers, and if you can't accept what we've already said that's your personal failing."




It's both. Do you even know what undead are? :smallconfused:


Try to be less insulting, perhaps?

Do you assume that undead must be exactly as they're (inconsistently across editions) presented by D&D, and that no other choices could have been made?




Given the way it's presented, I'm pretty sure the devs actually intended it to be evil for aesthetic reasons, and scrambled a bit to provide an ad hoc explanation years later in the undead-focused book. And did a poor job coming up with a convincing one.


I'd be stunned if that's not how it went down, the whole thing screams of "ad hoc retroactive", in both the timeline and the way it's not applied across the setting, just to that one little aspect of it.




There is a level of "indirect" harm that would convince me, but that level is so high that you can't have the D&D setting as presented and have it work out. The spell would have to have notable impact at least a plurality of the time it's cast. Because anything short of that makes "what are you doing with it?" a much more valid question than the setting wants to be asking.


While my threshold for the level of indirect harm to be problematic is probably lower, we have no idea at all what the actual level of indirect harm is, because that information is being deliberately not revealed. And as you note, at some point, the level of indirect harm would be so high that it would have other setting effects and implications that we clearly don't see in most of these settings.




It's clear their INTENT is that the spell be "icky, but not so icky that a Good person would refrain from casting it if the situation was dire enough." They pretty much spell this out. The trouble is, a lot of good can be done with it, and if the only cost is, essentially, "magical pollution" that causes harm in sufficient quantities, the amount of harm caused per animate dead-unit of "magical polution" has to be immense enough to be notable and genuinely make casting it even once impactful beyond what you're using it for, and in a notable way.


This is why I prefer 5e's far more direct approach -- it's not "Evil" in some abstract vague and evasively-undetailed metaphysical way, but it's risky in such a way that using it casually or repeatedly is an indicator that the caster is likely of an evil bent. Therefore, using it once and cautiously to save 1000 innocent lives isn't an EVIL action simply by fiat or rube goldberg "pollution" silliness. Necromancers are evil because of their reckless use of a risky spell, not because the spell is "polluting" them or the world.




Then...what is your goal? What is theirs? If persuading us that their setting makes sense isn't important, why bother with an explanation at all, when they clearly created it just to justify the extant rule?


I have no idea what their goal is, other than apparently to defend at any cost the ad-hoc standard by which it is asserted that Animate Dead is EVIL.

More broadly, I'm getting the impression that some posters aren't comfortable with the idea that one can object to the reasoning for a conclusion without objecting to the conclusion itself.




I mean, listen to your own question, here: if animate dead really can cause these things to arise through repeated use, this would be detectable and would also mean that every caster who uses it regularly would have a grand and notable impact on the setting! This isn't trivial. You still can't have it both ways: You can't have it at once create these legions of horrifying undead and have the setting not be visibly changed by the addition of even one caster who uses it regularly. And we clearly do have a setting that is not so visibly changed.


At the very least that sets an upper bound on just how "polluting" a single casting can really actually be.




So your argument is that "evil" is not in any way connected to the English meaning of the term, and is just a label. I can make a paragon of what the English-speaking world would agree is a good person, and have him be horrifically steeped in D&D evil, because there exists a mechanism to become evil while doing a lot of benevolent stuff and never hurting anybody.

That's generally the nature of D&D's Alignment "morality" across multiple editions -- you can become "EVIL" despite always doing and intending to do the right thing given the information and means at your disposal. Not sure how 5e really handles this... the text is self-contradictory and I get the sense that people drag a lot of assumptions in from prior editions.

[Psyren]

Given the way it's presented, I'm pretty sure the devs actually intended it to be evil for aesthetic reasons, and scrambled a bit to provide an ad hoc explanation years later in the undead-focused book.

Maybe. Why does it matter whether it was proactive or retroactive justification? You're free to accept it or not to either way.
(It's interesting that it's considered evil in every edition where it exists though - pointing to the idea that it's not something they came up with on the fly just for 3e.)


And did a poor job coming up with a convincing one.

You have every right to your subjective opinion, yes, I'm not disputing that by any means.


There is a level of "indirect" harm that would convince me, but that level is so high that you can't have the D&D setting as presented and have it work out. The spell would have to have notable impact at least a plurality of the time it's cast. Because anything short of that makes "what are you doing with it?" a much more valid question than the setting wants to be asking.
...
I'm not really trying to get exact values. You've asked what it would take to convince me, and I've answered in broad terms (but still more specifically than you've been willing to go): Enough that the spell would have a greater visible impact on the setting than it clearly does, and probably enough that its ancillary, negative effects are spelled out in the spell."

So not "there is no possible number that would convince me" but "there is no possible number in D&D settings as presented that would convince me."

Sure, fine, but then that just goes back to why they (or I for that matter) should waste a bunch of time trying to come up with something to satisfy you then, or to reconfigure said settings to fit with your specific preferences. Given that they've kept up with undead creation being evil in subsequent editions, clearly it's proven to be good enough for the majority; they can't please everyone and it would be a fool's errand to try.



It's clear their INTENT is that the spell be "icky, but not so icky that a Good person would refrain from casting it if the situation was dire enough." They pretty much spell this out. The trouble is, a lot of good can be done with it, and if the only cost is, essentially, "magical pollution" that causes harm in sufficient quantities, the amount of harm caused per animate dead-unit of "magical polution" has to be immense enough to be notable and genuinely make casting it even once impactful beyond what you're using it for, and in a notable way.

I've pointed out several ways that it could be more impactful if that's truly what you're looking for. The ratio (whether per cast or over a timeframe) could be higher than you think. You have no control where the net new undead show up, and that includes among nations/peoples that haven't consented to being part of your experiment. Whatever shows up could be high-CR, or capable of creating spawn, resulting in exponential deterioration of your model. Your undead workforce itself is a single d20 check or dead controller away from becoming a slavering horde inside your territory.

And even if one animate dead casting truly does have a minimal impact on all of that, you're not even talking about a lone adventuring necromancer who is using a couple of undead ogres as his hired muscle to save the world; you're talking about animating hundreds if not thousands to support an entire economy. Nations would go to war (overt or covert) to stop you, or at least to stem the tide, which results in even more death and suffering for your living citizens. All that pain so you can, what, save a few gp on just using constructs and nature magic instead?



With your refusal to extrapolate any example into an analogous one for purposes of examination, sure, I'll agree it's not a trolley problem. (Note that there is a difference between refusing to extrapolate, as you do, and refuting the analogy, which would involve detailing how it doesn't apply rather than asserting that any difference is clearly enough to invalidate it.) Me, I see it as a trolley problem because the harm caused by refusing to engage with an aspect of modern life, e.g. a car, is actually serious enough that choosing to do nothing is still choosing to increase potential harm to the world. Given how I choose to live my life, it's also clear that I view refusing to regularly drive a car as decreasing the net good I can do in the world by a greater amoung than would be counterbalanced by the reduced risk of harm entering it I contribute by my driving.

I'll give you credit for at least admitting they're analogies unlike Max.
But it's not "any difference is enough to invalidate it" - these are glaring flaws. You're talking about things like free will and CR and creating spawn and actively targeting the living as though they are inconsequential hanging chads rather than core qualities of a necromantic scenario, and I find that to be patently unreasonable for any serious discussion.



Then...what is your goal? What is theirs? If persuading us that their setting makes sense isn't important, why bother with an explanation at all, when they clearly created it just to justify the extant rule?

The operative clause there is "persuading us." They've persuaded plenty of others, myself included, who are not so hung up on the idea of utopian undead industry that we throw out all the alternatives.



How many animate deads does it take to free up enough people from subsistance farming to have a high enough level party to take down these threats?

I mean, listen to your own question, here: if animate dead really can cause these things to arise through repeated use, this would be detectable and would also mean that every caster who uses it regularly would have a grand and notable impact on the setting! This isn't trivial. You still can't have it both ways: You can't have it at once create these legions of horrifying undead and have the setting not be visibly changed by the addition of even one caster who uses it regularly. And we clearly do have a setting that is not so visibly changed.

So your argument is that "evil" is not in any way connected to the English meaning of the term, and is just a label. I can make a paragon of what the English-speaking world would agree is a good person, and have him be horrifically steeped in D&D evil, because there exists a mechanism to become evil while doing a lot of benevolent stuff and never hurting anybody.

For starters, we don't have a setting that actually does this, so you can't point to the existing settings and say "see, look at these, they're fine!" They're fine because every necromancer who gets this harebrained notion summarily gets a bunch of do-gooders up in his grill saying "yeah, no."

At best you have one nation that tries this in a setting (like Geb in Golarion) and they attract exactly the kind of response that I would expect to this sort of thing, namely the enmity of all their non-evil neighbors and both internal and external misery for their citizens. Which ends up with the entire nation being labelled evil, not that they care.

[Psyren]

Um... I "admitted" what now?

I said that they needed to do something they didn't do, that's not an "admission" that they did the thing.

Your exact words were, and I quote, "The people who wrote the book made the claim, now they need to back it up with something that isn't a vague assertion of indirect harm of unknown risk and severity."

i.e. you're saying that the thing they backed it up with was a vague assertion of indirect harm, no? So they did back it up with something?



OK, seriously, could you stop trying to put words in my mouth? I didn't say anything about alignment changes or afterlife destinations in this discussion, did I? I don't care about either of those things here. If you really think this is about either of those things, then you're making an entirely unfounded assumption.

Then again, you keep insisting that this is only and simply about the Animate Dead spell getting an "Evil" tag in isolation -- when myself and other posters have repeatedly said that it's not -- so I'm not sure how much of that is "mistaken assumption" and how much is... something else.

This is about the standard by which Animate Dead is being tagged "Evil" -- its ad hoc application to only a handful of setting elements, the clear lack of application of the same standard to other setting elements, and the frankly insulting and belittling way that we're being told that we must accept that of course just that spell and a few others violate that standard, and that if we can't then it's a failure of imagination on our part.


Your examples included, and I quote you again, "He need to repair a dam in the middle of the night with no help, but the workers graveyard is nearby. Does he maintain his "moral purity" by letting the dam collapse and wipe out the town below, or does he animate the undead, fix the bridge, and then "unmake" them (or whatever)?"

To which I pointed out - you don't need "moral purity" to still have a Good alignment; you can commit an evil act out of necessity - or even a few - without shifting or getting condemned. That's why the afterlife piece is important. The issue is doing it regularly or on a massive scale like Segev wants to do.



What we've been asking is, "by the standard you're using to say Animate Dead is "Evil", would these other things be "Evil?" -- and you've been rejecting them as "not enough like Animated Undead". "Enough like Animated Undead" is entirely your bugbear, and one that increasing comes across as simply a way to evade examining the standard as a standard instead of as an ad-hoc justification for a desired isolated element.

At least for me, I'm not trying to justify animating a lot of undead... I'm trying to demonstrate that the "standard" by which a few particular authors, and now you in their stead, are justifying the "EVIL" tag, is broken and insufficient and contradictory to other elements of the setting -- and that the "evil no matter what" tag is morally bankrupt if it says "saving 1000 innocent lives can be an "evil" action".

It would only be "morally bankrupt" if doing it once could condemn you as noted above. Again, not even paladins need perfect records, never mind a wizard or cleric.



NOTE that I have said I'm fine with 5e's position on Animate Undead, because doesn't drag in a vague ad-hoc un-standard in the attempt to make something "EVIL" instead of "risky in a way such that repeatedly using it indicates a strong chance of evilness". So clearly, I am not trying to make the undead a clean and wholesome part of your fantasy setting's economic structure.

What exactly is the difference between 5e and 3e here? In both, doing it routinely changes your alignment.




I must have missed those posts. What I have seen is:

X: "Why is Animate Undead tagged EVIL?"
P: "Because it risks bad things happening in the world via leaking negative energy."
X: "How big is that risk, and how does it compare to the background risk."
P: "It's bad enough to earn the EVIL tag. Here are some factors that would complicate any math you try to come up with, and whether the exact number is enough is going to vary widely based on the person's own opinions of usefulness of undead anyway, so it's perfectly reasonable for them to not have bothered beyond saying "enough," and the majority of their audience appears to have agreed so it was the right call."
X: "That's circular reasoning, and not an answer."
P: "Continuing to ask for numbers when I just explained why they would be a waste of time gets us nowhere. Come up with numbers that would satisfy you and use those."

I'm not a fan of fixing posts but since you were paraphrasing me (i.e. putting words in my mouth, ironically), I thought I'd clarify my bits.



Try to be less insulting, perhaps?

Do you assume that undead must be exactly as they're (inconsistently across editions) presented by D&D, and that no other choices could have been made?

I wasn't trying to be and I apologize if I was, but it's an honest question. Undead are powered by negative energy. Creating undead means more continuous sources of that energy on a plane it doesn't belong on, and that ties directly into the spontaneous appearance of the uncontrolled ones. Does that help? Honest question. Literally quoting the book here.

[Quertus]

The taking of sentient life that is actively trying to kill you, without provocation, is not "inherently wrong." Similar principle applies to defence of others, as does to defence of self.

The alignment of many acts is extremely context-sensitive.

To qualify as murder, "lethal violence" must fulfil certain criteria.

Iirc, they weren't trying to kill *you*, but *someone(s) else* in the example given.

If the person pulling the trigger is highly opposed to murder, but chooses to do it anyway, for the greater good (see trolly problem), I imagine that to be "something they have to live with". Just think about all the soldiers who've had problems living with killing people for their country.

Really, I imagine people who've killed in self defense might well feel it, too - I've just never heard such stories, and fortunately that wasn't the example under discussion.

But being in a situation where you're willing to do something you'd normally be highly opposed to really sounds, to me, like the kind of thing that leaves a permanent mark on your soul.


Given the way it's presented, I'm pretty sure the devs actually intended it to be evil for aesthetic reasons, and scrambled a bit to provide an ad hoc explanation years later in the undead-focused book. And did a poor job coming up with a convincing one.

There is a level of "indirect" harm that would convince me, but that level is so high that you can't have the D&D setting as presented and have it work out. The spell would have to have notable impact at least a plurality of the time it's cast. Because anything short of that makes "what are you doing with it?" a much more valid question than the setting wants to be asking.

if the only cost is, essentially, "magical pollution" that causes harm in sufficient quantities, the amount of harm caused per animate dead-unit of "magical polution" has to be immense enough to be notable and genuinely make casting it even once impactful beyond what you're using it for, and in a notable way.

I'm not really trying to get exact values. You've asked what it would take to convince me, and I've answered in broad terms (but still more specifically than you've been willing to go): Enough that the spell would have a greater visible impact on the setting than it clearly does, and probably enough that its ancillary, negative effects are spelled out in the spell."

So, how is "infinite" for convincing you? What if every casting of Animate Dead increases the connection permanently, and, over an infinite amount of time, produces an infinite number of spontaneous undead? Would you accept the [evil] tag then?

And why do you believe that "noticeable" matters to morality? What if, laws of the universe, every time you eat a chip, someone dies. And the gods tell you that eating chips is evil. How does this fail to give eating chips the [evil] tag?

But, yeah, the devs probably didn't actually do the work ahead of time. Any grognards care to say, "yeah, actually, we've had answers to this for the past 500 years in D&D 0.27 beta"?


At least when it comes to Segev and I, the problem we have -- and again, I think we've spelled this out a dozen times now --is not really specifically that Animate Undead has the tag "Evil", but rather the standard given for why it has that tag in one specific source, and how that same standard does not seem to be applied across the board. That is, the standard appears to exist only in isolation to retro-explain a single thing that the writer wanted to be true in the setting, and doesn't apply to anything else.

So, if Animate Dead increases the connection to the NEP, which produces some number of undead (perhaps even, over an infinite time frame, produces an infinite number of spontaneous undead), and that is classified as an evil act - what else did the designers miss retroactively saying, "oh, this other thing should therefore be evil, too"?

[Quertus]

I've pointed out several ways that it could be more impactful if that's truly what you're looking for. The ratio (whether per cast or over a timeframe) could be higher than you think. You have no control where the net new undead show up, and that includes among nations/peoples that haven't consented to being part of your experiment.

Which fails the criterion of "consent", (both for those being spontaneously animated, and those who have to deal with them) making it "evil" by Kantian ethics.

[patchyman]

The people who wrote the book made the claim, now they need to back it up with something that isn't a vague assertion of indirect harm of unknown risk and severity.

"It's in the book" is just another version of "because we said so". They made an assertion about their setting, it's on them to provide the underpinnings that make that assertion true.


The writers of the book made several assertions that are not strictly necessary for running the game, many of which some people find are ill-advised. Most of them merely can start a flame war simply by mentioning them.

The writers of the book also included a mechanism by which DMs could remove or ignore any assertions they disagree with.

Why are you putting the burden on the writers in this instance to go beyond “Animate Dead is an Evil spell”?

[Brookshw]

At least when it comes to Segev and I, the problem we have -- and again, I think we've spelled this out a dozen times now --is not really specifically that Animate Undead has the tag "Evil", but rather the standard given for why it has that tag in one specific source, and how that same standard does not seem to be applied across the board. That is, the standard appears to exist only in isolation to retro-explain a single thing that the writer wanted to be true in the setting, and doesn't apply to anything else. I'm aware of your position, yes.


As for "you don't need a reason", your examples seem to somewhat conflate character-level in-setting knowledge, with player-level game-system knowledge. The character in a Paranoia game not knowing why something is rated about their clearance, versus the designers of a game refusing to give straight answers about rules and setting intentions and decisions, are two entirely different things. No, because deciding to set security levels etc are all design decisions. You may as well be arguing "why do we roll a d20 and not a d12? I demand an explanation" for all it matters. You've been given answers, you don't like them. Okay, but those answers aren't going to change because you don't like them. What is it you actually want out of this thread? Do you want head canon or new fluff to justify Undead = Evil?

[/QUOTE]Now, if we're going to talk about "affirmative defense", based on how you used the term, I want to make sure you understand that the "affirmative" part of affirmative defense refers to the way in which the burden of proof shifts to the defense to prove that the conditions of that defense have been met -- see, self defense, justifiable homocide, etc. And while we're on definitions, killing someone is specifically not "murder" if one of those defenses is met, or the prosecution fails to prove that the killing was in fact murder, rather than a lesser offense. "Murder" is a specific thing, and "justifiable murder" is an oxymoron.[/QUOTE] Yes, I am aware. I'm also a lawyer not that it matters here. There's actually a good bit of debate among the legal community whether an affirmative defense actually negates the existence of the underlying crime or merely is a defense to it. Most opinions I've read fall into the defense category, though I do mostly copyright and transactional work so can't speak from experience to whether the criminal law community has a different majority view. Justifiable murder is not an oxymoron, certain justifications and facts are exactly what might mitigate a killing along the general scope of 1st/2nd degree murder or manslaughter (which all get lumped together in most jurisdictions).

[hamishspence]

But being in a situation where you're willing to do something you'd normally be highly opposed to really sounds, to me, like the kind of thing that leaves a permanent mark on your soul.

If a person who has sworn a Vow of Peace violates it by killing a would-be mass murderer in the act of attempting to commit mass murder - then they will permanently lose the benefits of their Vow and never be able to gain them again.

But they won't gain any Corruption points, they won't lose any paladin powers if they had them, and they won't be criticised for it in any Afterlife Judgement Panel.


Justifiable murder is not an oxymoron, certain justifications and facts are exactly what might mitigate a killing along the general scope of 1st/2nd degree murder or manslaughter (which all get lumped together in most jurisdictions).

That would be partially justified but not completely justified. Or, alternatively, excused, rather than justified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excuse

[Psyren]

Which fails the criterion of "consent", (both for those being spontaneously animated, and those who have to deal with them) making it "evil" by Kantian ethics.

Indeed, and you touched on the other big factor we haven't really addressed - the new undead themselves. Any that spontaneously spawn as intelligent undead due to this are just as much victims as anyone they hurt. For example, not all lonely children who die become Attic Whisperers, but if a necromancer's actions result in even one innocent child becoming one instead of passing on to the afterlife, that is a problem.

[Brookshw]

That would be partially justified but not completely justified. Or, alternatively, excused, rather than justified.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excuse

If you're going to turn to Wikipedia then it depends where on Wikipedia you look (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justifiable_homicide).

You'll also find that the terminology differs between jurisdictions and most exculpatory statutes or other legally relevant documents use "justification", or some tense of the root word, as part of their terminology. For example, "Cal Pen Code § 197: Justifiable homicide by other persons", or MA Jury Instruction 9.260 ("was justified in jusing such force in his (her) own self-defense."). If you really want more example I can keep pulling them up. Or maybe I'm just being a bit loose with the terminology here. It doesn't really matter :smalltongue:

[hamishspence]

Which is kind of the point - an excuse can reduce a charge from murder to manslaughter - but it cannot reduce a charge out of existence altogether - only a justification can do that.

There's no such thing as "justified murder" - only "justified homicide".

[Brookshw]

Which is kind of the point - an excuse can reduce a charge from murder to manslaughter - but it cannot reduce a charge out of existence altogether - only a justification can do that.

There's no such thing as "justified murder" - only "justified homicide".

Since we're using Wikipedia as a basis for this point, you'll note that Justified Homicide does not necessarily reduce a charge out of existence altogether but may instead provide mitigation. You're reading way too much into the terminology, especially considering that such terminology is not necessarily consistent across all jurisdictions.

[Max_Killjoy]

Your exact words were, and I quote, "The people who wrote the book made the claim, now they need to back it up with something that isn't a vague assertion of indirect harm of unknown risk and severity."

i.e. you're saying that the thing they backed it up with was a vague assertion of indirect harm, no? So they did back it up with something?


I said they needed to provide backup for their assertion that isn't the failed backup that they provided.

Saying they didn't do something that they needed to do is not an "admission" that they did that thing I just said they didn't do. :smallconfused:




Your examples included, and I quote you again, "He need to repair a dam in the middle of the night with no help, but the workers graveyard is nearby. Does he maintain his "moral purity" by letting the dam collapse and wipe out the town below, or does he animate the undead, fix the bridge, and then "unmake" them (or whatever)?"

To which I pointed out - you don't need "moral purity" to still have a Good alignment; you can commit an evil act out of necessity - or even a few - without shifting or getting condemned. That's why the afterlife piece is important. The issue is doing it regularly or on a massive scale like Segev wants to do.


Again, I don't care about shifting alignment or afterlife destinations here.

I care that doing the right thing gets tagged EVIL -- and that it's because of a selective ad-hoc "just so" standard that was clearly slapped in to justify trope and atmosphere without any consideration for the broader effects and implications.

I care that the clearly implied assertion is that the person who lets the 1000 people die is more "Good" than than the person who uses the tool he has at hand to save them, and that the only reason is some vague and undefined "indirect harm somewhere else sometime maybe but we can't tell you anything more because we don't want to".

The examples, the other situations, that have been laid out, all ask the same moral/ethical question that sits at the heart of the "animate undead" question... they don't need to be parallel, and they're not analogies... they're not meant to illustrate something about the spell Animate Dead, they're meant to delve into the asserted standard.




What exactly is the difference between 5e and 3e here? In both, doing it routinely changes your alignment.


3e -- We're tagging this spell EVIL. Why? Um, because casting this spell increases the odds of a bad thing happening somewhere sometime but we won't tell you what the actual risk is or how it compares to the background risk, and "pollutes" the world with an energy that's not evil until it is and evil until it isn't because we can't be bothered to be consistent. Oh, and casting it over and over again turns you EVIL. Because.

5e -- Casting this spell is risky because of the nature of the creatures it creates and the difficulties in controlling them. Repeatedly and recklessly casting this spell is a strong sign that the caster has active disregard for the safety, well-being, and lives of those around him, and thus reveals them as likely an evil individual.




I'm not a fan of fixing posts but since you were paraphrasing me (i.e. putting words in my mouth, ironically), I thought I'd clarify my bits.


Your fixes simply repeated what I already said you said, only using different words:



P: "Come up with numbers that would satisfy you and use those."


X: "That's circular reasoning, and not an answer."

Seriously, "If there exists some answer that would satisfy you, just assume it's that... and if there is no answer that would satisfy you, there's no point" is not an answer to any question, particularly when the question was asking for a more detailed account of an answer you already gave.

Can someone help me explain this in a different way that will make it clear why that's such a horrible un-answer?




I wasn't trying to be and I apologize if I was, but it's an honest question. Undead are powered by negative energy. Creating undead means more continuous sources of that energy on a plane it doesn't belong on, and that ties directly into the spontaneous appearance of the uncontrolled ones. Does that help? Honest question. Literally quoting the book here.


First, something powered by "negative energy" sounds a bit like opening the tap on a keg and letting all the beer run out... as a means to fill it? :smallconfused:

Second, if they're powered by "negative energy", how are they also leaking it, why isn't it going into powering them? (I'm assuming some sort of "reactor" answer here, but in the case of a nuclear reactor, the radiation is a waste product, it's the heat that powers electrical generation via steam and turbines, or via a thermocouple.)

Third -- and here we are at the sticking point again -- how much do they leak, how does it compare to the background rate, and how much of an added risk does it cause in proportion to the background risk?




Indeed, and you touched on the other big factor we haven't really addressed - the new undead themselves. Any that spontaneously spawn as intelligent undead due to this are just as much victims as anyone they hurt. For example, not all lonely children who die become Attic Whisperers, but if a necromancer's actions result in even one innocent child becoming one instead of passing on to the afterlife, that is a problem.


What are the baseline odds that a child becomes an Attic Whisperer after their death?
How much does a single casting of Animate Dead increase those odds?
Does the casting of Animate Dead need to be nearby (spatially and/or temporally), or is it a worldwide net effect?
Can that particular casting of Animate Dead be linked to that particular instance of an Attic Whisperer, or is it completely indirect?

[Psyren]

I said they needed to provide backup for their assertion that isn't the failed backup that they provided.

Saying they didn't do something that they needed to do is not an "admission" that they did that thing I just said they didn't do. :smallconfused:

"Failed" is a subjective judgment; "Exists" is not.
Their rationale exists (it's on the page) is fact; you disagreeing with it (saying that it failed) is opinion.



Again, I don't care about shifting alignment or afterlife destinations here.

I care that doing the right thing gets tagged EVIL -- and that it's because of a selective ad-hoc "just so" standard that was clearly slapped in to justify trope and atmosphere without any consideration for the broader effects and implications.

I care that the clearly implied assertion is that the person who lets the 1000 people die is more "Good" than than the person who uses the tool he has at hand to save them, and that the only reason is some vague and undefined "indirect harm somewhere else sometime maybe but we can't tell you anything more because we don't want to".

The examples, the other situations, that have been laid out, all ask the same moral/ethical question that sits at the heart of the "animate undead" question... they don't need to be parallel, and they're not analogies... they're not meant to illustrate something about the spell Animate Dead, they're meant to delve into the asserted standard.

It's not that the guy who committed an evil act to save people is more evil than someone who lets them die; rather, it's that someone who found a way to save them without committing an evil act is less evil than one who couldn't.

But if both of them go to Celestia, why does it matter if one got an A+ on their final report card and one got an A-? That, for the third time, is why alignment and afterlife matter. Your purity standard for necromancy is not only untenable, it's completely unnecessary.



3e -- We're tagging this spell EVIL. Why? Um, because casting this spell increases the odds of a bad thing happening somewhere sometime but we won't tell you what the actual risk is or how it compares to the background risk, and "pollutes" the world with an energy that's not evil until it is and evil until it isn't because we can't be bothered to be consistent. Oh, and casting it over and over again turns you EVIL. Because.

Because all the things you just listed, yes.
And nothing brings that energy into the world in the same way that making undead does.



5e -- Casting this spell is risky because of the nature of the creatures it creates and the difficulties in controlling them. Repeatedly and recklessly casting this spell is a strong sign that the caster has active disregard for the safety, well-being, and lives of those around him, and thus reveals them as likely an evil individual.

The 3e habitual necro guy has the exact same disregard for the safety, well-being and lives of those around him, that's the point.



Your fixes simply repeated what I already said you said, only using different words:

X: "That's circular reasoning, and not an answer."

Seriously, "If there exists some answer that would satisfy you, just assume it's that... and if there is no answer that would satisfy you, there's no point" is not an answer to any question, particularly when the question was asking for a more detailed account of an answer you already gave.

Can someone help me explain this in a different way that will make it clear why that's such a horrible un-answer?

It is an answer, just not an answer you like.



First, something powered by "negative energy" sounds a bit like opening the tap on a keg to fill it. :smallconfused:

Second, if they're powered by "negative energy", how are they also leaking it, why isn't it going into powering them? (I'm assuming some sort of "reactor" answer here, but in the case of a nuclear reactor, the radiation is a waste product, it's the heat that powers electrical generation via steam and turbines, or via a thermocouple.)

Third -- and here we are at the sticking point again -- how much do they leak, how does it compare to the background rate, and how much of an added risk does it cause in proportion to the background risk?

It can and in fact does do both in D&D (i.e. power the undead you've created, and weaken whatever fabric/veil/barrier is keeping our world from being overrun with uncontrolled ones.)



What are the baseline odds that a child becomes an Attic Whisperer after their death?
How much does a single casting of Animate Dead increase those odds?
Does the casting of Animate Dead need to be nearby (spatially and/or temporally), or is it a worldwide net effect?
Can that particular casting of Animate Dead be linked to that particular instance of an Attic Whisperer, or is it completely indirect?

In order: unknown, enough so that the spell is evil, planewide effect, enough so that the spell is evil.

[Gallowglass]

Why choose a scenario that's deliberately ridiculous?

Because the assertion that there would ever be a scenario where Creating Undead would be the only solution to a problem is deliberately ridiculous. You accuse me of making deliberately ridiculous scenarios but I have yet to see a single scenario provided where Creating Undead was a necessary "evil" to solve a "good" problem. So, yeah, pot. kettle.

And that includes your absolutist murder scenario of "I have to kill this 1 guy to save 1000 people." I don't buy into your "there's no other option" on/off flag. I mean, its awful hypocritical of you, you who were just saying that "Morality is more nuanced" to then implement absolutist reasoning in your scenarios but then chide us for using the same in ours.




But then, I also find the whole "but what if that town needed to be wiped out and you just couldn't understand the bigger picture?" thing to be utterly contrived and vapid, and ironic when used in defense of the same gods who evidently assert that killing 1 person to save 1000, or raising a few skeletons for a couple hours to save 1000, is still an evil act, regardless of the bigger picture of how many lives are saved. I guess it's true that most fantasy-setting gods don't actually give a darn about mortals.


And if you're going to accuse me of things like "You don't want to be proven wrong so you will never accept an argument that does so as valid", please don't even bother responding to my posts.



Irony is proving me right before telling me off.

But you win. I wont' bother with you anymore.

[Lord Raziere]

X: "That's circular reasoning, and not an answer."

Seriously, "If there exists some answer that would satisfy you, just assume it's that... and if there is no answer that would satisfy you, there's no point" is not an answer to any question, particularly when the question was asking for a more detailed account of an answer you already gave.

Can someone help me explain this in a different way that will make it clear why that's such a horrible un-answer?


Ok I'll try.

Psyren is making the assumption that Max WANTS to come up with those numbers when he doesn't. If he wanted to come up with those numbers, he already would have. But its not about providing an answer for Max to use for his own purposes. this is not about Max wanting an answer to help with a game- I assure you all he needs no help in that regard. this is about criticizing DnD as a world, as an example of what not to do in world-building and consistency in setting for everyone.

what I gather he wants, is for us to examine DnD not as a game for other purposes but as a world operating on its internal logic only and how that logic does not hold up, because it doesn't. his criticisms I find are always rooted in whether the world stands on it owns not on what purposes it serves to some outside reason or the scaffolding people use to hold it up. The impression I get, is that he doesn't care about either of those things and bringing them up is simply not relevant to anything he is talking about.

therefore suggesting this non-answer by coming up with his own scaffolding is not relevant to what he has in mind. His criticisms are about examining a world without scaffolding and I'm pretty sure his version of fixing the problem would be to make an entirely new setting where things make sense from the start rather than mere house rules, (thats just the impression I get, I don't know if its true, but Max is pretty exacting in his adherence to logic and the chain of cause and effect and I doubt any changes he make would stay small due to that.)

his criticisms I find are very much about immersion I'd say. when he wants to play in a setting he wants to be immersed in it, and he can't be immersed if he finds rules that don't make sense with one another. just like how we'd be weirded out if we knew about gravity but then found a random bowling ball that didn't obey gravity for any reason we can discern. this extends to moral rules. the alignment system makes very little sense when looked at critically and that doesn't stop applying just because he is in character- if real people can look at the universe critically, why not someone in character? and Max is someone I'm pretty sure is so smart he can't help but find flaws in reasoning everywhere. he'd simply find too many flaws even from an in character stand point to really be immersed in something nonsensical.

whether the designers intended this or that, or what the book says or anything is irrelevant- they all led to a nonsensical setting and origins are not justifications, are they Max? They are just explanations and not relevant to providing immersion or justifying their existence now. Am I helping at all?

[Psyren]

Psyren is making the assumption that Max WANTS to come up with those numbers when he doesn't. If he wanted to come up with those numbers, he already would have. But its not about providing an answer for Max to use for his own purposes. this is not about Max wanting an answer to help with a game- I assure you all he needs no help in that regard. this is about criticizing DnD as a world, as an example of what not to do in world-building and consistency in setting for everyone.

I mean, obviously I know that, but even if it was for an actual game the answer wouldn't really change - it has to be a number that makes sense for the GM in question, or else the alignment consequence itself needs to be houseruled away.

[Segev]

Maybe. Why does it matter whether it was proactive or retroactive justification? You're free to accept it or not to either way.It matters more how well thought-out the answer is. Given that the answer, if applied consistently, makes a whole heck of a lot of things "evil" that aren't, I believe it to be poorly thought-out. A post-hoc justification is fine, as long as it results in a more, or at least equally, internally-consistent setting than if it hadn't been made. This one fails that standard. Hard.

(It's interesting that it's considered evil in every edition where it exists though - pointing to the idea that it's not something they came up with on the fly just for 3e.)Oh, for crying out-- hang on, there's another one I need to quote to respond to at the same time....

So, how is "infinite" for convincing you? What if every casting of Animate Dead increases the connection permanently, and, over an infinite amount of time, produces an infinite number of spontaneous undead? Would you accept the [evil] tag then?For sadly what is probably NOT the last time, since people keep coming back to this as if they were arguing anything but a straw man, I have no problem with the [evil] tag. I have a problem with this particular justification for it.

Pardon the shouting, but I'm hoping it will be noticed and acknowledged and not forgotten in the future:

I have gone so far as to come up with an explanation for why it is evil that satisfies me. I'm fine with, even aesthetically like, animate dead being evil.

What I am saying is that the Libris Mortis "evil polution" explanation fails both in convincing me that it is evil to do (because I don't think regularly driving a car, no matter that it increases the risk of lethal car crashes, makes me evil), and because it would necessitate considering nearly any action one might take as evil because taking action increases risks of negative consequences arising from those actions.

It's not consistently applied as a standard, and if it were it would be messy. It isn't reflected in any of the standard settings. And it is the most diet caffeine-free mountain dew of "this is why it's evil" explanations possible. It's like telling somebody that playing D&D is evil because it might normalize a hobby that some crazy person might start killing people because he thinks summoning Lolth is possible with the right sacrifices. I'm sorry, you can't make me feel guilty, and just annoy me with your ludicrous chain of causality trying to blame me for, that idiot madman's bad behavior.



So not "there is no possible number that would convince me" but "there is no possible number in D&D settings as presented that would convince me."This is a lovely bit of spin, trying to frame what I'm saying as if I'm being unreasonable.

"So, what you're saying is, there's no way I could point to the increase in D&D-related murders in the USA to convince you that D&D causes serial killers?" is answered as "yes," when the full answer is, "There is no statistical evidence backing the assertion being made, so no, you can't point to non-existent statistical evidence to convince me of a claim for which there is no evidence."

Repeated more clearly: You're right; there is no possible number in D&D settings as presented because D&D settings as presented actively lack the numbers. You're essentially demanding that I accept that it's a perfectly good explanation, or I'm unreasonable...because it's the explanation and therefore accepting it is the only reasonable action. You're saying no amount of evidence that it fails as a justification can possibly be accepted by you, because attempting to demonstrate it in any way is automatically unreasonable.


Sure, fine, but then that just goes back to why they (or I for that matter) should waste a bunch of time trying to come up with something to satisfy you then, or to reconfigure said settings to fit with your specific preferences. Given that they've kept up with undead creation being evil in subsequent editions, clearly it's proven to be good enough for the majority; they can't please everyone and it would be a fool's errand to try.I didn't say they had to. I said that I found it inadequate, and proposed an alternative. You've spent the last many pages trying to tell me that I'm totally unreasonable for having a different explanation, and that theirs is perfectly fine and has no flaws, and that any flaws I bring up to explain why I find theirs unsatisfactory are utter nonsense and/or to be treated like I'm a whiny brat who wants animate dead to not be evil.


I've pointed out several ways that it could be more impactful if that's truly what you're looking for. The ratio (whether per cast or over a timeframe) could be higher than you think. You have no control where the net new undead show up, and that includes among nations/peoples that haven't consented to being part of your experiment. Whatever shows up could be high-CR, or capable of creating spawn, resulting in exponential deterioration of your model. Your undead workforce itself is a single d20 check or dead controller away from becoming a slavering horde inside your territory.And I've responded by pointing out that the settings we have don't support this. You've snarkily implied that this means I'm unreasonable, rather than actually addressing the point.


And even if one animate dead casting truly does have a minimal impact on all of that, you're not even talking about a lone adventuring necromancer who is using a couple of undead ogres as his hired muscle to save the world; you're talking about animating hundreds if not thousands to support an entire economy. Nations would go to war (overt or covert) to stop you, or at least to stem the tide, which results in even more death and suffering for your living citizens. All that pain so you can, what, save a few gp on just using constructs and nature magic instead?Look, it's about economies of scale. That lone necromancer using a few ogre zombies as muscle is probably doing LESS good than the society of organized skeletal farm laborer overseers. You're trying to make a case as if I'm using the undead farming kingdom as more than an easily-guaged metric of a reasonable amount of good that can be done by the spell. I'm not.

In practice, because (as we both agree) animate dead is something only an evil person would use regularly, it's unlikely that the undead are being put to a net-good use. But to avoid this being a circular argument, there must be a better reason than "it's never used for enough good" to explain why it's [evil] and therefore not used regularly by Good people who'd put it to Good use.


I'll give you credit for at least admitting they're analogies unlike Max.Everything that is similar to something else is an analogy. That's what being "analgous" means. I think Max is objecting to your attempt to dismiss them as if being an analogy makes it not comparable.

But it's not "any difference is enough to invalidate it" - these are glaring flaws. You're talking about things like free will and CR and creating spawn and actively targeting the living as though they are inconsequential hanging chads rather than core qualities of a necromantic scenario, and I find that to be patently unreasonable for any serious discussion."The car accident isn't actively trying to hurt people" isn't a glaring flaw. It's easily factored into the risk level of the bad thing happening. You're calling "glaring flaw" on anything that is not identical, ignoring the actual argument being made. You've failed, repeatedly, to address the point that an actively malign force is only going to use its ability to cause harm more effectively.

If I told you that you had a choice of living in a city with no car crashes, but one zombie who actively wants to murder as many people as possible will spawn each day, and everybody knows about it and there's training and weapons available for dealing with the mindless (and thus really dumb and incapable of learning) zombie, would you rather live there, or in a city where there are car crashes that kill hundreds every single day?

This is deliberately extreme, but consider it seriously and honestly: which would you rather live in? The zombie is actively trying to hurt people, but fairly easily dealt with. The car crashes statistically are horrifically deadly, but not actively seeking to hurt anybody. They just happen. Do you see why I disregard the "it's actively trying to hurt people!" point as anything more than a multiplier on the risk it represents?


The operative clause there is "persuading us." They've persuaded plenty of others, myself included, who are not so hung up on the idea of utopian undead industry that we throw out all the alternatives.Right, and if a flat earth / young earth creationist / global warming / other controversial but largely discredited by a lot of people video on YouTube convinces 98 out of 100 people in a room that the EArth is flat, and those two people in the room start making reasoned arguments to explain why they find the video unconvincing, does that excuse the video-maker or those who were persuaded from addressing the 2 unconvinced people? Does it mean that they're inherently and objectively wrong for not being convinced that the earth is flat / the universe is only 6000 years old / the world is heating up because there aren't enough pirates / whatever the video claimed, simply because it was convincing to 98 other people?

Max and I aren't arguing that we just don't like it. We've pointed out reasons why we find it inconsistent, and all we've gotten fired back is "you just want it not to be evil" or "those inconsistencies are totally not inconsistent because they're not exactly identical" or "well, you can believe it or not." None of which are actually logical or reasoned arguments. They're dismissals and straw men designed to avoid having to address the issues raised.


For starters, we don't have a setting that actually does this, so you can't point to the existing settings and say "see, look at these, they're fine!" They're fine because every necromancer who gets this harebrained notion summarily gets a bunch of do-gooders up in his grill saying "yeah, no."The Forgotten Realms have Thay, which make extensive use of the spell and which don't seem to have a higher rate of undead infestation plane-wide than any other setting.



And why do you believe that "noticeable" matters to morality? What if, laws of the universe, every time you eat a chip, someone dies. And the gods tell you that eating chips is evil. How does this fail to give eating chips the [evil] tag?Note that there is a notable relation. And that "notable" doesn't mean "noticeable by the actor." If you read my explanation of my preferred reason for it to be [evil], you'll note that there's no need for the caster to ever be aware that he's hurting anybody. He can be educated to this fact, but he needn't necessarily be.


So, if Animate Dead increases the connection to the NEP, which produces some number of undead (perhaps even, over an infinite time frame, produces an infinite number of spontaneous undead), and that is classified as an evil act - what else did the designers miss retroactively saying, "oh, this other thing should therefore be evil, too"?Well, for one, that's not actually what they said in LM, but I'll play along.

Living in cities increases the chances of plague. Every time somebody comes down with a disease, some amount of that disease permanently mutates to get more virulent and successful at spreading. Therefore, every time people do something that increases the chance of diseases spreading - like move into a city and concentrate population further - they're committing an evil act.

Moreover, we don't have any settings that show an overall uptick - let alone a geometric or exponential one - in undead concentration and presence over time. If every casting of animate dead did, as you propose, create a PERMANENT increase to the chances of spontaneous undead arising to do evil, this pattern would be painfully obvious. We'd have Dark Souls as the primary D&D setting. Not Forgotten REalms or Greyhawk or Golarion.

Or, at the very least, we'd have the settings talking about how the undead menace has been getting steadily worse for all of recorded history.

And we don't.

So that fails the setting-consistency test.

[Max_Killjoy]

"Failed" is a subjective judgment; "Exists" is not.
Their rationale exists (it's on the page) is fact; you disagreeing with it (saying that it failed) is opinion.


I can't disagree with what they never provided, and they never provided what they needed to provide.

I asked for reasoning with specificity and detail underpinning it -- and have not seen that yet.




It's not that the guy who committed an evil act to save people is more evil than someone who lets them die; rather, it's that someone who found a way to save them without committing an evil act is less evil than one who couldn't.


There will exist in reality situations in which the there is no "perfect" solution, only choices. Sometimes, you can't stop someone from doing something horrible without putting a crossbow bolt or a spell (or the real world equivalent) into them and risking them dying... that risk is the price of stopping them from hurting/killing a lot of other people.

Any morality based on "but you didn't do the perfect impossible thing in this situation" is a non-starter. Not being able to do the impossible perfect thing doesn't make the person who tried to do the best thing they could in a bad situation any more evil or less good than a hypothetical person who did the impossible perfect thing.




But if both of them go to Celestia, why does it matter if one got an A+ on their final report card and one got an A-? That, for the third time, is why alignment and afterlife matter. Your purity standard for necromancy is not only untenable, it's completely unnecessary.


Um... no, sorry, I'm not the one with the purity standard here, knock that off.

As for the rest... who bloody cares if they go to Celestia? Morality is not about rewards and punishments, it's not about report cards and gold stickers or frowny faces. Better to be damned for doing the right thing than to be blessed for doing the wrong thing.

The only thing that matters here is that doing the right thing is being tagged an "EVIL action" because of some vague and undefined risk that no one can seem to give any actual details about, and "spiritual pollution" by some poorly-defined energy that's not actually evil, until it is, evidently.




The 3e habitual necro guy has the exact same disregard for the safety, well-being and lives of those around him, that's the point.


If that's really the point, why is all the stuff about "negative energy leaks" and "spiritual pollution" included? It's entirely unnecessary...

...unless the actual point is to retro-explain fiat-tagging the ACTION as "EVIL"?




It is an answer, just not an answer you like.


There's more to an answer than "the thing I said in response to your question".




It can and in fact does do both in D&D (i.e. power the undead you've created, and weaken whatever fabric/veil/barrier is keeping our world from being overrun with uncontrolled ones.)


How? Even just generally?




In order: unknown, enough so that the spell is evil, planewide effect, enough so that the spell is evil.


If you don't know the baseline odds, or the increased odds, or anything else... then you don't actually know that it's "enough to be evil".





Ok I'll try.

Psyren is making the assumption that Max WANTS to come up with those numbers when he doesn't. If he wanted to come up with those numbers, he already would have. But its not about providing an answer for Max to use for his own purposes. this is not about Max wanting an answer to help with a game- I assure you all he needs no help in that regard. this is about criticizing DnD as a world, as an example of what not to do in world-building and consistency in setting for everyone.

what I gather he wants, is for us to examine DnD not as a game for other purposes but as a world operating on its internal logic only and how that logic does not hold up, because it doesn't. his criticisms I find are always rooted in whether the world stands on it owns not on what purposes it serves to some outside reason or the scaffolding people use to hold it up. The impression I get, is that he doesn't care about either of those things and bringing them up is simply not relevant to anything he is talking about.

therefore suggesting this non-answer by coming up with his own scaffolding is not relevant to what he has in mind. His criticisms are about examining a world without scaffolding and I'm pretty sure his version of fixing the problem would be to make an entirely new setting where things make sense from the start rather than mere house rules, (thats just the impression I get, I don't know if its true, but Max is pretty exacting in his adherence to logic and the chain of cause and effect and I doubt any changes he make would stay small due to that.)

his criticisms I find are very much about immersion I'd say. when he wants to play in a setting he wants to be immersed in it, and he can't be immersed if he finds rules that don't make sense with one another. just like how we'd be weirded out if we knew about gravity but then found a random bowling ball that didn't obey gravity for any reason we can discern. this extends to moral rules. the alignment system makes very little sense when looked at critically and that doesn't stop applying just because he is in character- if real people can look at the universe critically, why not someone in character? and Max is someone I'm pretty sure is so smart he can't help but find flaws in reasoning everywhere. he'd simply find too many flaws even from an in character stand point to really be immersed in something nonsensical.

whether the designers intended this or that, or what the book says or anything is irrelevant- they all led to a nonsensical setting and origins are not justifications, are they Max? They are just explanations and not relevant to providing immersion or justifying their existence now. Am I helping at all?

Thank you. That's true enough as my personal preferences go, however the real problem here is more universal than that.

Let's start with this:

Arguing from the Conclusion, AKA "begging the question" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question).

"It's evil because of X, and we can assume it's X enough to be evil because we know it's evil." is simply circular reasoning.







Because the assertion that there would ever be a scenario where Creating Undead would be the only solution to a problem is deliberately ridiculous. You accuse me of making deliberately ridiculous scenarios but I have yet to see a single scenario provided where Creating Undead was a necessary "evil" to solve a "good" problem. So, yeah, pot. kettle.


So what are the spellcaster's other options in that scenario, besides animating the skeletons? No time to run to town and wake the people and get them to come repair the dam. No way to call for help and have it arrive in time, is there? Maybe he has a spell that can repair the dam directly prepared right now, maybe he doesn't, I don't think it's contrived or ridiculous to suppose that he doesn't for the sake of the hypothetical.




And that includes your absolutist murder scenario of "I have to kill this 1 guy to save 1000 people." I don't buy into your "there's no other option" on/off flag. I mean, its awful hypocritical of you, you who were just saying that "Morality is more nuanced" to then implement absolutist reasoning in your scenarios but then chide us for using the same in ours.


Then change it to "you have to risk killing the guy".

You're standing 30 feet away, armed with a crossbow, and he's about to pull the lever. What are your choices besides taking the shot and risking his death, or letting him kill everyone in the town below?


What I do find contrived, to the point of being a trite platitude for children's books and 4-color-era comics... is "There's always another way". I know it sucks, but sometimes all the "other ways" are worse, or won't work, or are beyond your abilities.

[Willie the Duck]

I'm aware of your position, yes.

No, because deciding to set security levels etc are all design decisions. You may as well be arguing "why do we roll a d20 and not a d12? I demand an explanation" for all it matters. You've been given answers, you don't like them. Okay, but those answers aren't going to change because you don't like them. What is it you actually want out of this thread? Do you want head canon or new fluff to justify Undead = Evil?

Ok I'll try.

Psyren is making the assumption that Max WANTS to come up with those numbers when he doesn't. If he wanted to come up with those numbers, he already would have. But its not about providing an answer for Max to use for his own purposes. this is not about Max wanting an answer to help with a game- I assure you all he needs no help in that regard. this is about criticizing DnD as a world, as an example of what not to do in world-building and consistency in setting for everyone.

I also get the impression (and Max you can confirm or deny) that he would like validation or confirmation (or just to publicly log his disapproval) that the designers have, in some way, done something wrong or perhaps broken an promise, or at least a 'rule of good design' or the like. Not just that he doesn't like something, nor that it is simply functionally subpar, but in some way a transgression or letting us all down.

[Segev]

I also get the impression (and Max you can confirm or deny) that he would like validation or confirmation (or just to publicly log his disapproval) that the designers have, in some way, done something wrong or perhaps broken an promise, or at least a 'rule of good design' or the like. Not just that he doesn't like something, nor that it is simply functionally subpar, but in some way a transgression or letting us all down.

I can't speak for Max, but in my case, it's less "I want an acknowledgement" of anything, and more "I want to be understood." In this particular case, I'm trying to make a point: the LM explanation is bad because it fails several tests of what such an explanation needs to do.

It needs to be consistently applicable in such a way that extrapolating the reasoning to other things yields consistent results.
It needs to fit the established expectations of just how evil the spell is.
It needs to not have logical fallout that would render established setting traits inaccurate. Or, put another way, the setting should be consistent with an assumption that the explanation is true, rather than have contradictory evidence (or lack of expected evidence).

The LM explanation fails on all counts.

I also would like people to stop trying to convince me that animate dead deserves to be evil, and that I should stop trying to justify it being non-evil, because that's a straw man. I'm quite happy with animate dead being evil, and have an explanation for it that satisfies me. I use that explanation as an example of the kind of thing that would be required to be convincing, because that explanation works with all of the above-listed requirements. It's coherent, produces consistent results, and doesn't lead to "wait, what?" reactions regarding the definition of evil and good.

[Max_Killjoy]

I also get the impression (and Max you can confirm or deny) that he would like validation or confirmation (or just to publicly log his disapproval) that the designers have, in some way, done something wrong or perhaps broken an promise, or at least a 'rule of good design' or the like. Not just that he doesn't like something, nor that it is simply functionally subpar, but in some way a transgression or letting us all down.


That is certainly my view of it on the game design and worldbuilding side aspect. They've made a statement about their setting, and then failed to follow through with the implications, complications, and contradictions that arise out of that statement -- it's an ad-hoc "just so" statement that we're expected to accept and consume without question. Segev gets into it below as well, more after the quote of his post.

There's also the way in which moral terminology is used, and thus a moral assertion made, that I find so immoral that I cannot help be a little offended by it even though it's only a game setting.




I can't speak for Max, but in my case, it's less "I want an acknowledgement" of anything, and more "I want to be understood." In this particular case, I'm trying to make a point: the LM explanation is bad because it fails several tests of what such an explanation needs to do.

It needs to be consistently applicable in such a way that extrapolating the reasoning to other things yields consistent results.
It needs to fit the established expectations of just how evil the spell is.
It needs to not have logical fallout that would render established setting traits inaccurate. Or, put another way, the setting should be consistent with an assumption that the explanation is true, rather than have contradictory evidence (or lack of expected evidence).

The LM explanation fails on all counts.

I also would like people to stop trying to convince me that animate dead deserves to be evil, and that I should stop trying to justify it being non-evil, because that's a straw man. I'm quite happy with animate dead being evil, and have an explanation for it that satisfies me. I use that explanation as an example of the kind of thing that would be required to be convincing, because that explanation works with all of the above-listed requirements. It's coherent, produces consistent results, and doesn't lead to "wait, what?" reactions regarding the definition of evil and good.


I don't have a huge problem with animate dead being "EVIL", as such -- or rather, that's a symptom of the thing I object to, not the thing I object to. I too would like people to stop trying to convince me that animate dead should be an evil thing, it's beside the point and picking at the edges.

But as with you, my real problems here are that the explanation given in 3e/LM fails as an explanation -- the standard by which it is being judged "EVIL" fails as a standard both specifically and beyond its ad-hoc use -- for all the reasons you lay out.

Furthermore, I've finding much of the argument being done in defense of 3e/LM a tad insulting, personally and intellectually. "It's X because Y, and we know it's Y enough to be X because we know it's X" isn't an argument, it's an insult to our intelligence -- especially when we're then told it's a failure of our imaginations because we won't come up with how Y it is on our own, and that we have to accept that it's X because the book said so.

On your first point listed, it's aggravating that any attempt to apply the reasoning to other things is immediately greeted with "but that's not enough like animate dead to count", which both misses the point, and is so aggressive and narrow that it comes across as an attempt to avoid applying the reasoning to anything BUT animate dead, such that the explanation remains safely siloed within that one little ad hoc element.

[hamishspence]

IMO there's a whole bunch of things that tie together.

Undead, even non-evil undead, always detect as evil.
"Channelling negative energy" via Using The Cleric's Rebuke/Command Undead Ability, is evil.
"Mindless" undead are nearly always Evil-Aligned rather than Neutral aligned.

[Max_Killjoy]

IMO there's a whole bunch of things that tie together.

Undead, even non-evil undead, always detect as evil.
"Channelling negative energy" via Using The Cleric's Rebuke/Command Undead Ability, is evil.
"Mindless" undead are nearly always Evil-Aligned rather than Neutral aligned.

Is negative plane energy evil?

[Segev]

IMO there's a whole bunch of things that tie together.

Undead, even non-evil undead, always detect as evil.
"Channelling negative energy" via Using The Cleric's Rebuke/Command Undead Ability, is evil.
"Mindless" undead are nearly always Evil-Aligned rather than Neutral aligned.

All of which I agree are true, agree with the thematic and narrative decisions to enshrine in D&D's mechanics, and are utterly besides the point.

The point of contention is that the Libris Mortis "magical pollution" explanation as to WHY they're evil is weak.

...actually, I take back my full agreement. Can you show me where using "rebuke/command undead" is, itself, evil? You must be a worshipper of a neutral or evil god and neutral or evil, yourself, to use it, but that's not the same thing as saying that it is, itself, inherently evil.

In fact, you can be neutral, and remain neutral, and use it as often as you're spiritually capable, never slipping to evil at all. So it is a Neutral act, at worst. Unless there's a citation somewhere I'm forgetting.

[hamishspence]

Can you show me where using "rebuke/command undead" is, itself, evil? You must be a worshipper of a neutral or evil god and neutral or evil, yourself, to use it, but that's not the same thing as saying that it is, itself, inherently evil.

In fact, you can be neutral, and remain neutral, and use it as often as you're spiritually capable, never slipping to evil at all. So it is a Neutral act, at worst. Unless there's a citation somewhere I'm forgetting.


http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/specialAttacks.htm#neutralClericsandUndead

Neutral Clerics and Undead
A cleric of neutral alignment can either turn undead but not rebuke them, or rebuke undead but not turn them. See Turn or Rebuke Undead for more information.

Even if a cleric is neutral, channeling positive energy is a good act and channeling negative energy is evil.


Is negative plane energy evil?
The Negative Energy Plane itself isn't - not in the mechanical "penalise Good characters for being on the plane" sense. But by implication, there is some kind of tie between it and the cosmic force of Evil.

[Psyren]

Is negative plane energy evil?

Bringing it to the material is; it doesn't belong here. Much like the "pouring toxic waste in a field" analogy.

Getting ready for a party but I'll answer the longer posts later.

[Max_Killjoy]

Bringing it to the material is; it doesn't belong here. Much like the "pouring toxic waste in a field" analogy.

Getting ready for a party but I'll answer the longer posts later.

So what about positive plane energy?

[Dragonexx]

So why aren't inflict spells evil?

[Kraynic]

So why aren't inflict spells evil?

Who knows. It is somewhat implied by them being spontaneous cast only by evil (or evil leaning neutral) clerics, and by being labeled as necromancy vs conjuration.

Really, I think this thread has gotten past silly. Either go with what is implied in the system or not. This level of argument isn't likely to sway anyone. Though some may pull something from rolling their eyes too hard. :smalltongue:

[GreatWyrmGold]

D&D morality isn't consequentialist.
Yes, that's why I and others call it arbitrary. Then other people say it isn't arbitrary, and we get into these arguments. Now are you going to actually contribute to one side or the other, or are you going to just rephrase one side's ultimate thesis?



Conceded that the books do actually say some worthwhile things, I would argue that the amount of sheer boneheaded nonsense in them should prevent us from using them as primary sources when discussing alignment if we want our discussion to make any kind of sense and our conclusions to provide helpful guidelines at the gaming table.
On the other hand, if we want insight into the true nature of alignment, the BoVD and BoED are the perfect sources. They're real-world ideas of morality as seen by a specific culture, mixed with fantasy elements that don't always gel together (even in places where effort is made to incorporate them), with nothing more than a surface-level analysis applied to the philosophy behind the morality or how it would be read, leading to problems when read by people with either a different perspective on morality or a willingness to think about the implications for any significant amount of time. It exists as little more than a convenience, a way to simultaneously represent common fantasy tropes, justify killing certain creatures (with at best as solid a foundation as alignment has), and help new roleplayers think about their characters as independent people.
In short, alignment is as close to the Platonic essence of lazy worldbuilding as you can reasonably expect in the real world. It is designed with its narrative purpose first, and with no thought into either the real-world or the diegetic implications beyond the bare minimum required for it to act as a plot device.



...It's right up there with Pastafarian claims that the decrease in the number of pirates in the world has led to global warming.
Fair warning, I've been given a warning for just mentioning the phrase "giant flying spaghetti monster". Discussing Pastafarian beliefs is definitely against forum rules.



I could make a comparison, but I would be stepping into real-world politics.
Climate change is science, responses to climate change are not. If all science that a bunch of people disputed was called "politics," then we'd barely be able to talk about anything scientific. Astronomy? No, flat-earthers politicized that. Biology? Most modern biology is at least indirectly based on evolution, so better walk careful thanks to certain people talking about kinds and irreducible complexity.
Of course, different people might view this differently, so a zero-tolerance policy like this forum has is useless without someone defining the boundary, but the moderators don't want to do that because ???. And I'm still a bit salty about that, yes.



Wouldn't it be detrimental to the system, overall, for the designers to be more specific about alignment?
Depends on your goals. If you wanted a good alignment system, one that could adjudicate disputes about whether any given action was e.g. Good or Lawful, then you would want as specific an alignment system as possible. In editions where paladins could fall for taking too many non-Good or non-Lawful actions, or where acting as a new alignment could change how blasphemy or smite evil affected you, this was important.
5e has tried to minimize the effects of alignment, which is good...but it doesn't completely negate the need to discuss whether or not a given action fits a given alignment, because as long as characters have alignment, people will argue over whether or not X fits a given character's alignment. 5e keeps several downsides of alignment, while removing its mechanical necessity and moving its roleplaying-kickstarter role to other blanks on the character sheet. All it does now is serve as a team flag and a justification for standard fantasy tropes.



I don't think anyone would argue that the reasons given for Animate Dead's [Evil] tag is a bit weak. Just that it's no weaker than any other arbitrary decision made by designers. Why did monks need to be Lawful? Why must sorcerers have less HP than clerics? Why couldn't barbarians be lawful even though Salvatore always had battlerager dwarves? A decision was made. House rule it away or accept it.
We can have discussions about those topics if you want. For the curious, my thoughts on the matters:
Monks always being lawful makes fluff sense, because a "monk" is specifically a warrior who uses discipline the way a wizard uses study or a cleric uses faith. An monk without discipline makes as much sense as a wizard who doesn't study magic or a cleric who hates their god, and nonlawful alignments are generally not suitable for disciplined personalities.
Sorcerers have less hit points than clerics because the cleric class was originally based off of holy warriors more than medieval monks. The fact that modern D&D has classes more suited to the "holy warrior" archetype doesn't change the rut that the cleric class dug itself into before paladins were a thing.
Barbarians can't be lawful because their core concept is not "guy who gets angry," but "berserker raider/tribal warrior". Those archetypes fit poorly with lawful alignments.
And...once someone says "That's dumb, because X," I can say "Yeah, well, that's just the idea they were going for" and that's about the end of those discussions. Alignment discussions have a lot more meat to them, so people find arguing their opinion about X alignment issue more worthwhile and interesting than doing so for any of the above issues. It touches on a lot of issues that people think are worth discussing, in ways that arbitrary decisions about how to translate archetypes into classes aren't.



How is "increase happiness" any less fiat than "increase happiness, don't increase connection to NEP"?
In principle, it isn't.
In practice, "increase happiness" is something you can state as a Good Goal in any context and the only explanation needed is why you're stating the obvious, while "don't increase connection to the NEP" is not.
I don't see why this should need explanation, so I'm always at a loss when someone asks why "Make the world a better place" is inherently a better goal than "Make the world an oranger place" or "Maximize the number of paperclips in my collection" or "Destroy the multiverse". It is good to make people feel good, and bad to hurt them. You have to start somewhere, and that seems like a good place to start, because no reasonable person is going to argue those basic ideas.



Disagree, what responsibility the designers may have at all is only to the default. Anything custom is the responsibility of the GM allowing/creating it.
I'd be more inclined to agree with you if the core rulebooks didn't have explicit rules for designing new content. 5e is off the leash for that; 3.5, not so much.



So? D&D isn't an ethics textbook.
Very few works of fiction are intended as "textbooks" about anything. So are you saying we shouldn't care how anything is depicted in anything? That seems like an extreme position to take, so I assume you have something else backing up your argument.
D&D misrepresents morality by conflating its arbitrary cosmic forces with moral terms, and never quite committing to the idea that they're just convenient labels for arbitrary cosmic forces. If it committed to that idea (the way something like A Practical Guide to Evil does), we wouldn't be having this conversation; if it committed to the idea that Evil and Good were just moral terms of no importance beyond mortal judgement (the way something like A Song of Ice and Fire does), we still wouldn't be having this discussion. But D&D wants people to be able to play plots inspired by works like APGtE and ASoIaF, as well as LotR-type ones where what Good and Evil are, exactly, doesn't matter as much as their qualities (like self-destructiveness or free will).


I don't think you get to unilaterally declare that consequentialist morality is objectively and unquestionably correct, though. I mean, I agree with you, but plenty of people don't. One could conceive of a universe in which this is not the case.
Only if they already believe that morality is an objective fact of the universe.
One can conceive of a universe where gravity or fire did not exist, but subjective morality (like logic, mathematics, and politics) exist entirely within our own minds as a framework for understanding the world around us.



-snip-
What I see here is a big pile of "I don't see why people care about this, so they shouldn't argue about it. Just suck it up and ignore everything you don't like about D&D!" I hate that outlook, especially the part where it tells us not to talk about parts we dislike in a thing we like.
You don't think there's any point in discussing whether or not the authors of D&D did a good job in justifying certain design decisions, because such design decisions don't need justifications? Great, this discussion isn't for you. You don't get to belittle other people for caring about something you don't care about. In doing so, you're being as much of a prick as someone who came to this forum to point out that Faerun isn't a real place and so your D&D games were just a waste of time.

While I'm here, I'd like to point out the disparity between the logic of "D&D's take on morality is Just Another Thing you need to accept to play the game, like Paranoia's security clearance or CoC's madness" and the logic of "If you don't like it, you can just houserule it". One implies there is neither a problem nor a reason to examine it for problems, the other admits that there is a problem and posits that the solution is to shut up and do it yourself instead of criticizing the people who made the mistake.



-snip-

Brandishing a sword doesn't carry an increased chance of an uncontrolled sword randomly appearing somewhere else on the material plane though, no matter how many people do that. So this isn't the best analogy.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether your drawn sword impales someone you didn't mean to stab because you wielded that sword badly or because your sword caused another sword somewhere to stab somebody. Either way, a guy got impaled. (There are probably better analogies, e.g. fossil fuels causing pollution, but I don't see any inherent problem with the sword analogy.) There is risk in any method of solving a problem, and no type of solution can always be the riskiest solution to all problems in all situations.
Also, if we accept the explanation that negative energy (and hence future, malevolent undead) are created by spells, we should accept the implication that we can remove/oppose negative energy (and the potential undead it creates) somehow. Maybe it involves releasing positive energy, or negative-energy-capture technology that's sure to become practical any decade, or just triggering the creation of weak undead you can easily destroy. But if that exists, and I've never seen a reason given why it wouldn't, then we have to ask ourselves why the spell itself is [Evil], not merely the act of using it without proper safeguards. Sure, animate dead cast recklessly can destroy an entire village, but so can a fireball if you hit the grain silo or something.



This analogy doesn't work because you're still conflating the direct effects of the spell (a fireball setting something it hits on fire) and the indirect effects. If fireball caused random fires to appear somewhere in the world that you couldn't even plan for, AND said indirect fire did nothing but actively seek out the living, AND every living being that fire kills could then lead to more fire popping up in the world to do the same thing (and in some cases, the victim becomes fire themselves), AND the fire could last indefinitely without this living fuel but ceaselessly craved it anyway such that the problem can't be ignored... then you might have an argument that these are similar. But they're not. Fireball and Meteor Swarm do none of those things.
Alright, let's start with the bit where living beings that fires kill make more fire...they kinda do. The reproductive process of "fire" is called "being on fire," and while it works best on buildings, trees, and fields of dry crops, it works perfectly fine on people. Fire can absolutely spread over ridiculous chunks of land, killing tons of people.
But more importantly: At the end of the day, who gives a crap whether your reckless spell use kills a bunch of people via immediate combustion or whether it does so via wraiths sometime down the line? Why does that matter? You people keep saying it does, but you haven't explained why.



It's vague in the sense that you may as well claim that it's evil to wear metal armor because the more metal armor there is in the world, the weaker druid magic becomes worldwide. How do we know this? Uh, because we say so. Does your character refraining from wearing metal armor make ANY difference to this? No, probably not.

If I play a necromancer who doesn't mind the problem that others will have to deal with more spontaneously-animated dead in the world for the fact that I have tons of minions, will it ever even be NOTICEABLE that my prolific usage of animate dead has increased the number of spontaneous undead in the setting? Or is this more like spitting into the ocean, where the measurable impact is negligible to nonexistent?
In other words: Is any one person using fossil fuels Evil? Like what Libris Mortis vaguely says about the undead, fossil fuels cause harm and suffering down the line from the gradual buildup of something subtle and hard to detect. Arguably, it's more Evil than animating the undead, because greenhouse gasses don't coalesce into things people can beat up and make non-threatening; they just linger.



DnD in short has a very odd obsession with being perfectly symmetrical in its cosmology and setting design. when really it could benefit from being more asymmetrical to better differentiate this and that, more effort to make good actually good and evil actually evil.
Problem is, plenty of fantasy fiction (and beliefs we're not supposed to discuss which inspired said fiction) treats Good and Evil as cosmic forces, often equal and opposite. Can't remove that and still have plots reliant on tropes reliant on capital-letters Good and Evil.



Does depleting your own soil cause an unknown amount of soil in an unknowable principality to also fail? Does that depleted soil then actively seek out even more living beings to malnourish and starve, endlessly until stopped?
Desertification can continue without active human effort, so yes to the last. Aside from the "active," since tha requires an intelligent agent, but as far as I'm concerned that matters as much as whether or not you're killing people you know or people you don't.



Comparing a mundane threat in a supernatural world to a supernatural threat in a supernatural world seems... shortsighted to me.

WHY?!?
Just...why? Why does it matter whether a threat is "supernatural"? Why does it matter that it's an actively malevolent agent and not a "passive" force of nature? Why does it matter that the threat pops up somewhere you don't see it?
You keep saying "Yes, but the undead threat is X," and expecting everyone to just accept that that makes it worse. It doesn't work like that. We can't read your mind, you have to explain yourself. If we already understood why malevolent, supernatural, uncertain threats were worse than certain, natural ones, we'd probably agree with you!



But it matters in how easy it is to mitigate. And as I demonstrated above, D&D settings consider a disease outbreak to be small potatoes compared to undead monsters. (Hint: the former doesn't need adventurers to solve nearly as often.)
So, the sole reason behind why animate dead is [Evil] but cities are not, is that you need scattered bands of low-level adventurers to deal with spontaneous undead, which are ineffective against plagues?

In 3.5, remove disease requires a 5th-level cleric/druid or 11th-level ranger. Checking with a random city generator suggests there are generally less than one such caster per two thousand residents in a small city, and usually seven per large city (which is an even lower ratio). They'd need a small army to locate potential plagues, and they'd need to find them when there were maybe a few dozen victims if the plague was anywhere near as fast-spreading as it was IRL. Especially since they'd likely need to cast remove disease on their own helpers whenever a plague was suspected...

Oh, and 5e doesn't seem to have the spell at all. Have fun!

Honestly, if the undead are just things like ghouls and wights, they sound like the smaller threat. Even with allips or shadows, it's pretty neck-and-neck; both require the attention of reasonably-skilled casters (ideally clerics) to handle. The big difference is that you can see wights, but most plagues can't be noticed without serious risk of the noticer already being infected.


The biggest problem is that you have no way to control which undead you get - all of them become more likely. That includes entities far more destructive than any car crash (or cookie.)
The Libris Mortis section wasn't that clear, and given that all high-level undead have specific creation conditions mentioned that go beyond "high background levels of negative energy," I'm gonna call BS on this assertion. (Also the fact that most settings aren't covered with spontaneous kingdom-wrecking nightshades)


You also can't control where - see any encounter table with undead in it, which on the Material is nearly all of them.
Since when can you control where car crashes happen? That's the entire point of the analogy! More cars on the road affects how everyone on the road drives, making it harder for everyone to avoid a crash.



*This being one of the reasons I prefer the 5e view. There undead require the regular input of a caster of at least fifth level (not something you see all over the place), plus becoming dangerously uncontrolled if the caster is somehow unable to reassert control daily, plus being dangerous if any commoner happens to get too close. All of which are real, concrete dangers. And where it's extreme hubris to think you can perfectly control all the risks.
It's extreme hubris to think you can perfectly control all the risks involved in, say, using fossil fuels for power generation (even ignoring global warming). Every step, from mining to transport to burning the coal in a controlled fashion, has risks. Nobody can control them perfectly.
You don't need to think you can control the risks perfectly to try.



Is there any evidence to refute the possibility that a setting with 0 undead (etc) would have 0 spontaneous undead?
Is there any evidence to refute the possibility that there's an invisible inaudible scentless flour-permeable pink unicorn in my garage?



My point exactly - the only things that are like undead, are undead. Common ground at last.
So, undead are bad because they are "like undead" in some way, and that way is "they are undead". Your argument seems to amount to "undead are bad because they are undead".
If there was literally anything else to it, there would be other things that are like undead in that one way.



In D&D anyway, robots constructs lack an inherent craving to end all sapient life, making them doesn't have any impact on the number of uncontrolled evil ones that can be found out in the world, none of them are intelligent or create spawn from their victims, none of them can gain class levels or wrest control of docile ones for their own agenda...

(Well, that last one might not be true, I haven't read every statblock in existence.)
But all of those things are true for demons. Not in the same way*, but those things do happen. So are demons like undead?

*For instance: Summoning a demon doesn't create ambient demonic energy that might cause a quasit to appear somewhere, it just lets that demon corrupt more souls to be sent to the Abyss. Or maybe they'd just abduct victims and send them back screaming, I'm not sure how demonic reproduction works. I am pretty sure it depends on mortal souls, though, and bringing demons to the mortal plane lets them influence mortal souls more effectively.



Not quite; I think stating the numbers doesn't matter. I've said repeatedly that there is very likely a number, and that number is "enough." What I'm not interested in is a bunch of napkin math that is going to vary widely in terms of subjective individual thresholds anyway.
There is an argument that would convince you that an invisible inaudible scentless flour-permeable pink unicorn lives in my garage. That does not prove that such an entity exists.



You have every right to your subjective opinion, yes, I'm not disputing that by any means.
Gods above and below, I hate that "argument". It's just a way of dismissing the entire argument, somehow without dismissing your own half of it. On top of that, it dismisses any reasons someone might have for holding such an opinion, which is extraordinarily rude after such a long argument wherein Segev explained said reasons pretty thoroughly.



My interpretation of Quertus' statements was that the character cares - but only as far as player cares. And player cares more about the group than about the character's character.

-snip-
What you describe is a fairly reasonable argument, weakened as an argument in this context by the fact that it has nothing to do with scruples, which are central to Quertus's thesis.



As far as I can tell, Quertus is basically saying:

Characters with scruples are those which feel compelled to act in a certain way, in certain situations.
Those with these scruples are therefore more likely to ignite intraparty conflict with a character that has different scruples - and is therefore compelled to act in a different, mutually exclusive manner.
Meanwhile, characters without scruples are those who are not compelled to act in any specific way; as a result, they can pick whichever course of action is most beneficial or least likely to cause intraparty conflict.
These characters without scruples care about the results of the decisions being made, but not about the actions taken to get those results; effectively "the ends justify the means", but without any need to justify the means.

Point 1 is a pretty bad definition of "scruples," since it applies to anything from a paladin who literally can't do evil without losing their powers to an evil overlord who refuses to give up power to a drug addict who needs their fix, man. It doesn't describe a scrupulous character so much as a motivated or well-defined one.
If that is, indeed, how Quertus defined scruples from the start, he did a craptastic job of initially explaining his position. If it's not how Quertus defined scruples from the start but how he defines it now, we need to have a discussion about moving goalposts before we can start our discussion about the value of character motivation. If it's not how he defines it at all, well...

[Lord Raziere]

Problem is, plenty of fantasy fiction (and beliefs we're not supposed to discuss which inspired said fiction) treats Good and Evil as cosmic forces, often equal and opposite. Can't remove that and still have plots reliant on tropes reliant on capital-letters Good and Evil.

True.

However, one notes that if you lean too far into these things as cosmic forces, you begin to end up with the failure state of such of a cosmology similar to the one depicted in A Practical Guide to Evil: Villains aren't really villains, Heroes aren't really heroes, stories themselves are physical law, are used as tools to kill each other with and both Angels and Demons just become two different flavors of massive jerk.

Generally, good is better depicted as a personal trait of a character rather than a force from on high, because the more wide and cosmic good as a force gets, the more problems you introduce in trying to explain why this force hasn't solve everything yet- and more important why this force hasn't become extremist in trying to enforce what is good without becoming ineffectual and impotent.

Evil as a cosmic force works because it can act like a natural disaster and those are generally bad from humanity's perspective. It can be as destructive and forceful as it wants. good however if it really needs to be a cosmic force, has to be more subtle and far more soft in its touch if it wants to remain good. to the point where it can seem unnoticeable- and thus to someone who isn't paying attention, which probably is most people, nonexistent and thus ineffectual and impotent.

its either that or your end up with heavy-handed prophecies forcing someone to become a chosen one to defeat an evil. which carries its own bunch of problems regarding free will.

[EGplay]

I guess I want to put my 2c in as well here.

The following are relevant SRD necro spells:

Animate Dead
Contagion - no NE, suffer
Create (greater) Undead
Curse Water - no progeny, no NE
Death Knell - no progeny, no NE
Deathwatch - no progeny, no NE
Eyebite - no progeny maybe NE, suffering
Symbol of Pain - no NE, suffering

Chill Touch
Energy Drain
Enervation
Ghoul Touch
Harm
Inflict (any) Wounds ((mass))
Touch of Fatigue
Wave of Exhaustion

Magic Jar
Soul Bind

This of course is not exhaustive regarding spells and effects relevant to the discussion, but it illustrates the following point:
The LM explanation as presented here for applying the 'evil' tag is not, not even within the necromancy school, inclusive nor exclusive.
By that I mean: not all things those explanations would deem evil have the tag, and not all things that posses it follow the given reasons.

To me, the appliance of the 'evil' tag is ineffable enough to be called capricious, without further, satisfying, explanation.

The ones shown from the book of bad Latin are at best incomplete, and that is the actual problem people, me included, have with them.

An yes, this goes for a good number of other world building aspects, obviously.
Those aspects are critizised more or less equally.

[Quertus]

It matters more how well thought-out the answer is. Given that the answer, if applied consistently, makes a whole heck of a lot of things "evil" that aren't, I believe it to be poorly thought-out. A post-hoc justification is fine, as long as it results in a more, or at least equally, internally-consistent setting than if it hadn't been made. This one fails that standard. Hard.
Oh, for crying out-- hang on, there's another one I need to quote to respond to at the same time....
For sadly what is probably NOT the last time, since people keep coming back to this as if they were arguing anything but a straw man, I have no problem with the [evil] tag. I have a problem with this particular justification for it.

Pardon the shouting, but I'm hoping it will be noticed and acknowledged and not forgotten in the future:

I have gone so far as to come up with an explanation for why it is evil that satisfies me. I'm fine with, even aesthetically like, animate dead being evil.

What I am saying is that the Libris Mortis "evil polution" explanation fails both in convincing me that it is evil to do (because I don't think regularly driving a car, no matter that it increases the risk of lethal car crashes, makes me evil), and because it would necessitate considering nearly any action one might take as evil because taking action increases risks of negative consequences arising from those actions.

In practice, because (as we both agree) animate dead is something only an evil person would use regularly, it's unlikely that the undead are being put to a net-good use. But to avoid this being a circular argument, there must be a better reason than "it's never used for enough good" to explain why it's [evil] and therefore not used regularly by Good people who'd put it to Good use.

The Forgotten Realms have Thay, which make extensive use of the spell and which don't seem to have a higher rate of undead infestation plane-wide than any other setting.


Note that there is a notable relation. And that "notable" doesn't mean "noticeable by the actor." If you read my explanation of my preferred reason for it to be [evil], you'll note that there's no need for the caster to ever be aware that he's hurting anybody. He can be educated to this fact, but he needn't necessarily be.

Well, for one, that's not actually what they said in LM, but I'll play along.

Living in cities increases the chances of plague. Every time somebody comes down with a disease, some amount of that disease permanently mutates to get more virulent and successful at spreading. Therefore, every time people do something that increases the chance of diseases spreading - like move into a city and concentrate population further - they're committing an evil act.

Moreover, we don't have any settings that show an overall uptick - let alone a geometric or exponential one - in undead concentration and presence over time. If every casting of animate dead did, as you propose, create a PERMANENT increase to the chances of spontaneous undead arising to do evil, this pattern would be painfully obvious. We'd have Dark Souls as the primary D&D setting. Not Forgotten REalms or Greyhawk or Golarion.

Or, at the very least, we'd have the settings talking about how the undead menace has been getting steadily worse for all of recorded history.

And we don't.

So that fails the setting-consistency test.


I can't speak for Max, but in my case, it's less "I want an acknowledgement" of anything, and more "I want to be understood." In this particular case, I'm trying to make a point: the LM explanation is bad because it fails several tests of what such an explanation needs to do.

It needs to be consistently applicable in such a way that extrapolating the reasoning to other things yields consistent results.
It needs to fit the established expectations of just how evil the spell is.
It needs to not have logical fallout that would render established setting traits inaccurate. Or, put another way, the setting should be consistent with an assumption that the explanation is true, rather than have contradictory evidence (or lack of expected evidence).

The LM explanation fails on all counts.

I also would like people to stop trying to convince me that animate dead deserves to be evil, and that I should stop trying to justify it being non-evil, because that's a straw man. I'm quite happy with animate dead being evil, and have an explanation for it that satisfies me. I use that explanation as an example of the kind of thing that would be required to be convincing, because that explanation works with all of the above-listed requirements. It's coherent, produces consistent results, and doesn't lead to "wait, what?" reactions regarding the definition of evil and good.


That is certainly my view of it on the game design and worldbuilding side aspect. They've made a statement about their setting, and then failed to follow through with the implications, complications, and contradictions that arise out of that statement -- it's an ad-hoc "just so" statement that we're expected to accept and consume without question. Segev gets into it below as well, more after the quote of his post.

There's also the way in which moral terminology is used, and thus a moral assertion made, that I find so immoral that I cannot help be a little offended by it even though it's only a game setting.




I don't have a huge problem with animate dead being "EVIL", as such -- or rather, that's a symptom of the thing I object to, not the thing I object to. I too would like people to stop trying to convince me that animate dead should be an evil thing, it's beside the point and picking at the edges.

But as with you, my real problems here are that the explanation given in 3e/LM fails as an explanation -- the standard by which it is being judged "EVIL" fails as a standard both specifically and beyond its ad-hoc use -- for all the reasons you lay out.

Furthermore, I've finding much of the argument being done in defense of 3e/LM a tad insulting, personally and intellectually. "It's X because Y, and we know it's Y enough to be X because we know it's X" isn't an argument, it's an insult to our intelligence -- especially when we're then told it's a failure of our imaginations because we won't come up with how Y it is on our own, and that we have to accept that it's X because the book said so.

On your first point listed, it's aggravating that any attempt to apply the reasoning to other things is immediately greeted with "but that's not enough like animate dead to count", which both misses the point, and is so aggressive and narrow that it comes across as an attempt to avoid applying the reasoning to anything BUT animate dead, such that the explanation remains safely siloed within that one little ad hoc element.

So, to me, the humorous part of this is, y'all are saying, "Libris Mortis is not doing a good job explaining why Animate Dead is evil" while yourselves not doing a good job explaining what a good job explaining what something being evil would look like. Which, to be fair, is absolutely not required to make such a statement. But then y'all seen resistant to having a discussion about the criteria, and what it would take for them to be valid.

For my "infinity" example, suppose it took a billion castings of Animate Dead to go from IRL (no pollution, no spontaneous undead) to "the level of spontaneous undead seen in most campaign worlds". Or set the numbers however your like. Point is, my example does not necessitate different "starting conditions" than one would find in a typical campaign. Further, that number could theoretically be different for different worlds - it may well take a million castings on Kryn to equal one casting in Toril. Thus, the numbers don't matter. The question is, simply, if, over an infinite amount of time, each casting of Animate Dead produces an infinite number of spontaneous undead, is the spell evil? Why or why not?

Note, this is not "risk", this is guarantee. Each person you add to a city does not guarantee infinite death from infinite disease mutation, and so is an invalid parallel. Y'all were dissing risk (which I think you are wrong to do, but, fine, we'll play your game), so you do *not* get to make a parallel that involves risk. Only guaranteed infinite.

Not that "driving a car" exists in (most) D&D, but driving a car does not produce infinite cast crash deaths, and so also doors not follow from following through on the moral implications of labeling Animate Dead as evil. So, again, what *actually* gets labeled incorrectly as evil if you follow through with the logical consequences of calling "creating undead pollution" evil, if you accept my numbers of "infinite"?

Lastly, I have no issue believing that, were undead pollution a thing, someone could be as smart as Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named, and could have invented a "lower undead pollution" spell. This would allow for worlds where the number of spontaneous undead does not increase over time, without making the spell any less evil. But have undead (not) increased over time? Statement was, they exist on all random encounter tables. Any grognards care to state how those tables compare to older editions?


IMO there's a whole bunch of things that tie together.

Undead, even non-evil undead, always detect as evil.
"Channelling negative energy" via Using The Cleric's Rebuke/Command Undead Ability, is evil.
"Mindless" undead are nearly always Evil-Aligned rather than Neutral aligned.

This sounds like the developers did a much better job being consistent than they've been given credit for thus far.

[Dragonexx]

Except that negative energy itself is explicitly a morally neutral force, and other abilities that use negative energy aren't [Evil] (like inflict and harm).

[Max_Killjoy]

I guess I want to put my 2c in as well here.

The following are relevant SRD necro spells:




This of course is not exhaustive regarding spells and effects relevant to the discussion, but it illustrates the following point:
The LM explanation as presented here for applying the 'evil' tag is not, not even within the necromancy school, inclusive nor exclusive.
By that I mean: not all things those explanations would deem evil have the tag, and not all things that posses it follow the given reasons.

To me, the appliance of the 'evil' tag is ineffable enough to be called capricious, without further, satisfying, explanation.

The ones shown from the book of bad Latin are at best incomplete, and that is the actual problem people, me included, have with them.

An yes, this goes for a good number of other world building aspects, obviously.
Those aspects are critizised more or less equally.

There it is, bringing negative energy into the material isn't consistantly tagged evil or called evil... evil by tag and evil by description aren't in sync... and even within the scope of these spells the "it's evil because negative energy" explanation/standard being deconstructed isn't shown to be nonfunctional.



Except that negative energy itself is explicitly a morally neutral force, and other abilities that use negative energy aren't [Evil] (like inflict and harm).


Exactly.

Now maybe someone will say that some spells release "enough" negative energy to be "EVIL", and some do not -- but that is where the explanation opens itself to the questions of how much is enough and how much each spell releases into the material... that have neen steadfastly not answered.

[Brookshw]

snip

:smallconfused:I walked in here to crack a (bad) joke about how applying the same rational used to justify Undead = Evil should result in repercussions when trapping any other energy/elemental source on the Prime. My comments that you're replying to were a response to a direct claim someone made to me that this was "important". If someone makes a direct statement to you then yes, you are indeed allowed to respond to it.

[hamishspence]

Except that negative energy itself is explicitly a morally neutral force, and other abilities that use negative energy aren't [Evil] (like inflict and harm).

Spontaneously casting inflict spells is something all Evil clerics do though, and no Good clerics can do.

[Max_Killjoy]

So, to me, the humorous part of this is, y'all are saying, "Libris Mortis is not doing a good job explaining why Animate Dead is evil" while yourselves not doing a good job explaining what a good job explaining what something being evil would look like. Which, to be fair, is absolutely not required to make such a statement. But then y'all seen resistant to having a discussion about the criteria, and what it would take for them to be valid.


I'm pretty sure that's been made clear.

* Spells that bring negative energy into the material would have to all be tagged "EVIL", because they would all increase the "undead risk" to some degree, right?
* Spells that carry any risk of collateral damage would have to all be tagged "EVIL", because that's what makes Animate Dead "EVIL" via the extra "undead risk", right?


Of course, it might be better to just ditch the silly thing, which is what 5e actually does.

[Quertus]

The following are relevant SRD necro spells:




This of course is not exhaustive regarding spells and effects relevant to the discussion, but it illustrates the following point:
The LM explanation as presented here for applying the 'evil' tag is not, not even within the necromancy school, inclusive nor exclusive.
By that I mean: not all things those explanations would deem evil have the tag, and not all things that posses it follow the given reasons.

To me, the appliance of the 'evil' tag is ineffable enough to be called capricious, without further, satisfying, explanation.

AFB, and I'm too senile to keep track of what LM said vs what's just an example, but… does LM actually discuss "undead pollution"? If so, are there any spells which explicitly create "undead pollution" which do not have the [evil] tag? If everything that is explicitly called out as creating undead pollution has the evil tag, then there is zero incoherence in the explanation "undead pollution makes a spell evil".


I'm pretty sure that's been made clear.

* Spells that bring negative energy into the material would have to all be tagged "EVIL", because they would all increase the "undead risk" to some degree, right?
* Spells that carry any risk of collateral damage would have to all be tagged "EVIL", because that's what makes Animate Dead "EVIL" via the extra "undead risk", right?


Of course, it might be better to just ditch the silly thing, which is what 5e actually does.

Well, for starters, IIRC (darn senility), both of you are claiming that "evil" *must* be harm-based. This is not a universally accepted truth - utilitarianism presumes it is based on "happiness", while Kantian ethics claim it is based on "consent", for example. How many pages did it take for y'all to explicitly state your core assumption? And do note that you are not even stating it in your summary, above.

So, if D&D is not built on a harm-based philosophy of evil, everything you say falls apart, *unless* you can prove (unlike, say, all the Philosopher's who have come before you) that the definition of evil *must* be based on harm.

But, fine, we pretend for the moment that "harm" is an acceptable requirement for evil. Then y'all start talking about harm vs good done, intent, knowledge, risk, direct vs interdict harm, etc. It sounds like y'all have a *very complicated* vision of what makes a thing "evil". If that's wrong, by all means, simplify it for me; but, if that's true, then why shouldn't everyone want and accept a much simpler abstraction for their elf games than your personal complex theorem that isn't accepted as the universal philosophical truth of the nature of evil?

But, if your reasoning is correct, and there is some complex relationship between harm, good done, intent, etc, well, we still don't know how you measure it, so we still cannot follow your assertions to know whether all negative energy, undead risk, or collateral damage spells should be equally evil. If you do indeed have the secret sauce, the litmus test for evil, then, by all means, explain it.

What we *may* be able to say is, D&D does not seem to care about "intent" when it labels actions "evil". And - correct me if I'm wrong - if that's the case, there is no proof in modern philosophy that that is an inherently incorrect stance on the nature of evil.

So, *if* D&D doesn't care about intent, and *if* modern philosophy doesn't vilify that as an inherently incorrect view of the nature of evil, then, yes, the burden is on you to prove both D&D and modern philosophy wrong. *If* you want to claim that morality must take intent into account.

Of course, that was a lot of "ifs", any one of which could well be wrong. Point is, I'm attempting to demonstrate just how large the gulf is between what seems obvious to you (and Segev), and where complete ignorance (me - or, at least, the stance I am attempting take) or modern beliefs about the nature of evil (let alone whatever the designers' beliefs about the nature of evil may have been) could be.

[Psyren]

Okay, back!


It matters more how well thought-out the answer is. Given that the answer, if applied consistently, makes a whole heck of a lot of things "evil" that aren't, I believe it to be poorly thought-out. A post-hoc justification is fine, as long as it results in a more, or at least equally, internally-consistent setting than if it hadn't been made. This one fails that standard. Hard.

So in your view "it's evil because of the effects it can have on the setting" is less internally consistent than "it's evil and we don't feel like giving any kind of explanation why, just deal with it?" Because I disagree with that, and with your opinion of the justification.



Oh, for crying out-- hang on, there's another one I need to quote to respond to at the same time....
For sadly what is probably NOT the last time, since people keep coming back to this as if they were arguing anything but a straw man, I have no problem with the [evil] tag. I have a problem with this particular justification for it.

I have gone so far as to come up with an explanation for why it is evil that satisfies me. I'm fine with, even aesthetically like, animate dead being evil.

What I am saying is that the Libris Mortis "evil polution" explanation fails both in convincing me that it is evil to do (because I don't think regularly driving a car, no matter that it increases the risk of lethal car crashes, makes me evil), and because it would necessitate considering nearly any action one might take as evil because taking action increases risks of negative consequences arising from those actions.

It's not consistently applied as a standard, and if it were it would be messy. It isn't reflected in any of the standard settings. And it is the most diet caffeine-free mountain dew of "this is why it's evil" explanations possible. It's like telling somebody that playing D&D is evil because it might normalize a hobby that some crazy person might start killing people because he thinks summoning Lolth is possible with the right sacrifices. I'm sorry, you can't make me feel guilty, and just annoy me with your ludicrous chain of causality trying to blame me for, that idiot madman's bad behavior.

1) As previously mentioned, "convincing Segev and Max" was not likely to be a design goal of Libris Mortis.
2) Of course it's reflected in standard settings. You know how in all of them, necromancy is heavily discouraged and folks who want to animate dead regularly are either furtive about it, or if they're blatant, live in pretty morally bankrupt societies? This is why.
3) So now I can add "playing D&D" to the list of failed analogies for animating undead :smalltongue: Looking forward to the next one.



This is a lovely bit of spin, trying to frame what I'm saying as if I'm being unreasonable.

"So, what you're saying is, there's no way I could point to the increase in D&D-related murders in the USA to convince you that D&D causes serial killers?" is answered as "yes," when the full answer is, "There is no statistical evidence backing the assertion being made, so no, you can't point to non-existent statistical evidence to convince me of a claim for which there is no evidence."

Repeated more clearly: You're right; there is no possible number in D&D settings as presented because D&D settings as presented actively lack the numbers. You're essentially demanding that I accept that it's a perfectly good explanation, or I'm unreasonable...because it's the explanation and therefore accepting it is the only reasonable action. You're saying no amount of evidence that it fails as a justification can possibly be accepted by you, because attempting to demonstrate it in any way is automatically unreasonable.

There is a perfectly reasonable alternative actually, houseruling it. That's not a dirty word. I houserule things I don't like too, the game itself encourages it.



I didn't say they had to. I said that I found it inadequate, and proposed an alternative. You've spent the last many pages trying to tell me that I'm totally unreasonable for having a different explanation, and that theirs is perfectly fine and has no flaws, and that any flaws I bring up to explain why I find theirs unsatisfactory are utter nonsense and/or to be treated like I'm a whiny brat who wants animate dead to not be evil.

And I've responded by pointing out that the settings we have don't support this. You've snarkily implied that this means I'm unreasonable, rather than actually addressing the point.

Look, it's about economies of scale. That lone necromancer using a few ogre zombies as muscle is probably doing LESS good than the society of organized skeletal farm laborer overseers. You're trying to make a case as if I'm using the undead farming kingdom as more than an easily-guaged metric of a reasonable amount of good that can be done by the spell. I'm not.

In practice, because (as we both agree) animate dead is something only an evil person would use regularly, it's unlikely that the undead are being put to a net-good use. But to avoid this being a circular argument, there must be a better reason than "it's never used for enough good" to explain why it's [evil] and therefore not used regularly by Good people who'd put it to Good use.

Everything that is similar to something else is an analogy. That's what being "analgous" means. I think Max is objecting to your attempt to dismiss them as if being an analogy makes it not comparable.
"The car accident isn't actively trying to hurt people" isn't a glaring flaw. It's easily factored into the risk level of the bad thing happening. You're calling "glaring flaw" on anything that is not identical, ignoring the actual argument being made. You've failed, repeatedly, to address the point that an actively malign force is only going to use its ability to cause harm more effectively.

If I told you that you had a choice of living in a city with no car crashes, but one zombie who actively wants to murder as many people as possible will spawn each day, and everybody knows about it and there's training and weapons available for dealing with the mindless (and thus really dumb and incapable of learning) zombie, would you rather live there, or in a city where there are car crashes that kill hundreds every single day?

This is deliberately extreme, but consider it seriously and honestly: which would you rather live in? The zombie is actively trying to hurt people, but fairly easily dealt with. The car crashes statistically are horrifically deadly, but not actively seeking to hurt anybody. They just happen. Do you see why I disregard the "it's actively trying to hurt people!" point as anything more than a multiplier on the risk it represents?


If the only uncontrolled undead on encounter tables and in monster manuals were simple zombies, then you might have a point. They're not, so this one still fails. This is deliberately extreme, but consider it seriously and honestly: how much "training and weapons" do you envision would allow a nation to deal with something like an Atropal? What if that Atropal didn't even show up in their nation, how would you gauge their morals then?



The Forgotten Realms have Thay, which make extensive use of the spell and which don't seem to have a higher rate of undead infestation plane-wide than any other setting.

Every setting has evil nations that employ necromancy, Thay/FR isn't special. So saying "these settings all have the same rate of undead infestation" makes sense and is a non-starter.

The other thing those settings have in common, are pesky do-gooders that keep those nations and their vile necromancers in check.



Right, and if a flat earth / young earth creationist / global warming / other controversial but largely discredited by a lot of people video on YouTube convinces 98 out of 100 people in a room that the EArth is flat, and those two people in the room start making reasoned arguments to explain why they find the video unconvincing, does that excuse the video-maker or those who were persuaded from addressing the 2 unconvinced people? Does it mean that they're inherently and objectively wrong for not being convinced that the earth is flat / the universe is only 6000 years old / the world is heating up because there aren't enough pirates / whatever the video claimed, simply because it was convincing to 98 other people?

Max and I aren't arguing that we just don't like it. We've pointed out reasons why we find it inconsistent, and all we've gotten fired back is "you just want it not to be evil" or "those inconsistencies are totally not inconsistent because they're not exactly identical" or "well, you can believe it or not." None of which are actually logical or reasoned arguments. They're dismissals and straw men designed to avoid having to address the issues raised.

As dumb as it might be to say it, the flat earth thing is a political topic so I'm giving it a wide berth.

I know that you're arguing that you find it inconsistent - THAT is what I'm arguing against. For example, when you say you find it inconsistent because "settings with nations that practice necromancy don't have a higher rate of spontaneous undead than those without" I'm pointing out that ALL the settings have nations that practice necromancy, so you have no point of comparison to actually make. These are the "inconsistencies" that I've been refuting this entire time.



Note that there is a notable relation. And that "notable" doesn't mean "noticeable by the actor." If you read my explanation of my preferred reason for it to be [evil], you'll note that there's no need for the caster to ever be aware that he's hurting anybody. He can be educated to this fact, but he needn't necessarily be.

Well, for one, that's not actually what they said in LM, but I'll play along.

Living in cities increases the chances of plague. Every time somebody comes down with a disease, some amount of that disease permanently mutates to get more virulent and successful at spreading. Therefore, every time people do something that increases the chance of diseases spreading - like move into a city and concentrate population further - they're committing an evil act.

Moreover, we don't have any settings that show an overall uptick - let alone a geometric or exponential one - in undead concentration and presence over time. If every casting of animate dead did, as you propose, create a PERMANENT increase to the chances of spontaneous undead arising to do evil, this pattern would be painfully obvious. We'd have Dark Souls as the primary D&D setting. Not Forgotten REalms or Greyhawk or Golarion.

Or, at the very least, we'd have the settings talking about how the undead menace has been getting steadily worse for all of recorded history.

And we don't.

So that fails the setting-consistency test.

The undead themselves are what give the negative effects permanency, not the spell. They are the conduit (LM 7). Meaning that every undead that gets destroyed lessens the effect. That's why using undead for industry is the worst possible plan, because those undead cannot be allowed to exist in such numbers indefinitely. And that is why making more of them is an evil act, D&D settings are barely hanging on as it is - even with this kind of necromancy as discouraged as it is, very powerful and nasty beings (not just zombies) are still making it through.

[Fable Wright]

Can we ignore Animate Dead for a moment and go back to a missed point?

Death Knell is as [Evil] as Animate Dead. Somehow moreso than just stabbing someone and casting a buff spell.

We know that [Death] spells are not inherently evil. See Finger of Death.

So far as I know, Death Knell does not channel negative energy or increase free willed undead.

It is exactly as evil as casting Animate Dead.

Or, to reframe it, casting Animate Dead is only as evil as stabbing someone you would kill anyways, then applying a buff to yourself.

Psyren, as the advocate for alignment tags being inherently justified... why is that?

[Quertus]

how much "training and weapons" do you envision would allow a nation to deal with something like an Atropal? What if that Atropal didn't even show up in their nation, how would you gauge their morals then?

The undead themselves are what give the negative effects permanency, not the spell. They are the conduit (LM 7). Meaning that every undead that gets destroyed lessens the effect. That's why using undead for industry is the worst possible plan, because those undead cannot be allowed to exist in such numbers indefinitely. And that is why making more of them is an evil act, D&D settings are barely hanging on as it is - even with this kind of necromancy as discouraged as it is, very powerful and nasty beings (not just zombies) are still making it through.

Oh. Well, if it's the undead themselves that increase the odds of spontaneous undead, then the math actually matters for determining whether creating undead to save lives should still be an [evil] act. Under certain brands of morality, that is. Is x% chance of creating an Atropal at some random location in the universe able to be balanced against the good of saving 1,000 lives? If so, then it may not be an evil act. D&D morality seems to say that the answer is "no" in D&D land, that one cannot balance such evil with *any* amount of good. IMO, the burden of proof is on those who claim that that is an invalid moral stance. That there do not exist evils so great that they cannot be balanced by any amount of good.

[Anymage]

For my "infinity" example, suppose it took a billion castings of Animate Dead to go from IRL (no pollution, no spontaneous undead) to "the level of spontaneous undead seen in most campaign worlds". Or set the numbers however your like. Point is, my example does not necessitate different "starting conditions" than one would find in a typical campaign. Further, that number could theoretically be different for different worlds - it may well take a million castings on Kryn to equal one casting in Toril. Thus, the numbers don't matter. The question is, simply, if, over an infinite amount of time, each casting of Animate Dead produces an infinite number of spontaneous undead, is the spell evil? Why or why not?

That sort of "the harm is infinite because it happens to infinite hypothetical people" is the premise of many halfassed moral arguments. By similar logic, that skeleton will continue providing labor forever, therefore creating infinite prospective good.

I'll point out the main thrust of my argument to Psyren. I just wanted to note here that I get extremely skeptical when I see an infinite term in a moral argument.


1) As previously mentioned, "convincing Segev and Max" was not likely to be a design goal of Libris Mortis.
2) Of course it's reflected in standard settings. You know how in all of them, necromancy is heavily discouraged and folks who want to animate dead regularly are either furtive about it, or if they're blatant, live in pretty morally bankrupt societies? This is why.
3) So now I can add "playing D&D" to the list of failed analogies for animating undead :smalltongue: Looking forward to the next one.



There is a perfectly reasonable alternative actually, houseruling it. That's not a dirty word. I houserule things I don't like too, the game itself encourages it.

I don't know how active Segev and Max were in either gaming or game discussions fifteen years ago. Obviously the book wasn't influenced by this discussion, that happened well after it was written.

However, even back in the day, there were several people who were unsatisfied with morality that was only justified by "that's what the book says". There were also a lot of people who did try to extrapolate moral statements from what was written in the rules, and create world arguments from there. (Fun fact: In 3.0, mindless undead were Neutral because the philosophy at the time was that to have alignment you had to be sentient. Also, orcs went from Usually CE in 3.0 to Often CE in 3.5 precisely due to arguments over whether orcs could be considered free moral agents (and as such, you had no reason to go off and exterminate that orc village that wasn't causing a problem), or congenitally problematic (in which case, since that orc village is destined to become a problem as soon as they consolidate enough power, and wiping them out now is the prudent move).) I'm pretty sure that the LM explanation was bolted on as an explanation because it did create some harm to animating the dead beyond "the book says it's bad", while not invalidating or changing too much of what had already been written.

5e came out more than a decade after LM was released. That was plenty of time for more debates, plenty of time for more ideas to be bandied about, and the fact that the new edition rebooted a lot of things freed the devs up to hardcode their rules in. The reason we have more than just "it's vaguely bad because we say so" is because of people like Segev and Max being loudmouths about the flaws in the earlier systems.

And now that we have newer and better ideas - up to and including the 5e solution, which many people do find more satisfying and more easy to fit into the world - I don't get why you're so actively defending this one idea that was clearly put together to make animating the dead feel like a consequentialist harm, but kinda falls apart because it's a justification that was slapped together after all the important elements had already been stated.

[Quertus]

Can we ignore Animate Dead for a moment and go back to a missed point?

Death Knell is as [Evil] as Animate Dead. Somehow moreso than just stabbing someone and casting a buff spell.

We know that [Death] spells are not inherently evil. See Finger of Death.

So far as I know, Death Knell does not channel negative energy or increase free willed undead.

It is exactly as evil as casting Animate Dead.

Or, to reframe it, casting Animate Dead is only as evil as stabbing someone you would kill anyways, then applying a buff to yourself.

Psyren, as the advocate for alignment tags being inherently justified... why is that?

I'll not deny that some other spells may be incorrectly labeled, or may need better explanation as to why they are (or aren't) [evil]. But that is completely irrelevant to why Animate Dead is labeled [evil]. The only things that can be compared are things with a similar "undead pollution" effect - which, it appears, is just things which create Undead. So, unless any of those lack the [evil] tag, the presence or absence of the evil tag on any other spell is completely irrelevant to this discussion.

[Quertus]

That sort of "the harm is infinite because it happens to infinite hypothetical people" is the premise of many halfassed moral arguments. By similar logic, that skeleton will continue providing labor forever, therefore creating infinite prospective good.

I'll point out the main thrust of my argument to Psyren. I just wanted to note here that I get extremely skeptical when I see an infinite term in a moral argument.



I don't know how active Segev and Max were in either gaming or game discussions fifteen years ago. Obviously the book wasn't influenced by this discussion, that happened well after it was written.

However, even back in the day, there were several people who were unsatisfied with morality that was only justified by "that's what the book says". There were also a lot of people who did try to extrapolate moral statements from what was written in the rules, and create world arguments from there. (Fun fact: In 3.0, mindless undead were Neutral because the philosophy at the time was that to have alignment you had to be sentient. Also, orcs went from Usually CE in 3.0 to Often CE in 3.5 precisely due to arguments over whether orcs could be considered free moral agents (and as such, you had no reason to go off and exterminate that orc village that wasn't causing a problem), or congenitally problematic (in which case, since that orc village is destined to become a problem as soon as they consolidate enough power, and wiping them out now is the prudent move).) I'm pretty sure that the LM explanation was bolted on as an explanation because it did create some harm to animating the dead beyond "the book says it's bad", while not invalidating or changing too much of what had already been written.

5e came out more than a decade after LM was released. That was plenty of time for more debates, plenty of time for more ideas to be bandied about, and the fact that the new edition rebooted a lot of things freed the devs up to hardcode their rules in. The reason we have more than just "it's vaguely bad because we say so" is because of people like Segev and Max being loudmouths about the flaws in the earlier systems.

And now that we have newer and better ideas - up to and including the 5e solution, which many people do find more satisfying and more easy to fit into the world - I don't get why you're so actively defending this one idea that was clearly put together to make animating the dead feel like a consequentialist harm, but kinda falls apart because it's a justification that was slapped together after all the important elements had already been stated.

Skeptical? As well you should be. In this case, people were arguing about the significance of numbers, and I should hope that you are able to see that my use of "infinite" was completely justified by my hypothesis. Granted, it was apparently not *completely* justified by the most recent explanation of the underlying mechanics (namely, undead pollution levels being based on the number of undead, not by the act of casting spells).

So, yes, a given casting has a *theoretically infinite* harm potential. Subsequently, the D&D designers have deemed it always [evil] to take such a risk casting this spell - that no amount of good done can balance the harm probability curve enough to make it not an [evil] act, even if one particular casting happens to do less harm than good.

I am not seeing where that is an inherently untenable stance for an elf games abstraction of morality to take.

[Fable Wright]

I'll not deny that some other spells may be incorrectly labeled, or may need better explanation as to why they are (or aren't) [evil]. But that is completely irrelevant to why Animate Dead is labeled [evil]. The only things that can be compared are things with a similar "undead pollution" effect - which, it appears, is just things which create Undead. So, unless any of those lack the [evil] tag, the presence or absence of the evil tag on any other spell is completely irrelevant to this discussion.

The question is, and to my knowledge has been—is the [Evil] tag justified on Animate Dead?

Psyren's argument was working from the answer (yes, it is evil) to generate arguments why. The counterargument is "point me to the fact the risk factor is so high that it's considered always evil regardless of other circumstances," and claiming that the risk factor was simply so low that it shouldn't be considered evil.

Psyren's working off the axiom that the [Evil] tag is always correct. If this axiom is disproven, it validates the opposing argument that one must look at the details of the effects before passing moral judgement on an action or spell.

Questioning the foundation on which the argument is based is hardly irrelevant to the discussion. :smallconfused:

[Max_Killjoy]

1) As previously mentioned, "convincing Segev and Max" was not likely to be a design goal of Libris Mortis.


That's a lovely canard you've offered up there, "well because the authors weren't specifically trying to convince these two particular people they'd never heard of, way back when the book was written, then of course the authors don't need to be convincing at all."

It's as if we're discussing philosophy, and I say "that argument isn't very convincing", and your response is "I'm certain Kant wasn't trying to convince you, so your skepticism is meaningless". :smallconfused:

The authors of the book made an assertion, one can assume that they'd want that assertion to be convincing and believable. And having made that assertion, the burden of supporting, of making it convincing and believable, it is entirely on them, not on the readers -- the readers are in no way obligated to convince themselves or to take the assertion at face value.

This is one of the several reasons why "there's an answer that would convince you, assume that answer is the truth" is such a horrible argument -- it attempts to absolve the person making the assertion of supporting it, in favor of foisting the burden of proof off on everyone else... and it's especially intellectually offensive when followed up by "and if you don't provide the answer that will convince you, then either you lack imagination or you just refuse to be convinced".




I don't know how active Segev and Max were in either gaming or game discussions fifteen years ago. Obviously the book wasn't influenced by this discussion, that happened well after it was written.

However, even back in the day, there were several people who were unsatisfied with morality that was only justified by "that's what the book says". There were also a lot of people who did try to extrapolate moral statements from what was written in the rules, and create world arguments from there. (Fun fact: In 3.0, mindless undead were Neutral because the philosophy at the time was that to have alignment you had to be sentient. Also, orcs went from Usually CE in 3.0 to Often CE in 3.5 precisely due to arguments over whether orcs could be considered free moral agents (and as such, you had no reason to go off and exterminate that orc village that wasn't causing a problem), or congenitally problematic (in which case, since that orc village is destined to become a problem as soon as they consolidate enough power, and wiping them out now is the prudent move).) I'm pretty sure that the LM explanation was bolted on as an explanation because it did create some harm to animating the dead beyond "the book says it's bad", while not invalidating or changing too much of what had already been written.

5e came out more than a decade after LM was released. That was plenty of time for more debates, plenty of time for more ideas to be bandied about, and the fact that the new edition rebooted a lot of things freed the devs up to hardcode their rules in. The reason we have more than just "it's vaguely bad because we say so" is because of people like Segev and Max being loudmouths about the flaws in the earlier systems.

And now that we have newer and better ideas - up to and including the 5e solution, which many people do find more satisfying and more easy to fit into the world - I don't get why you're so actively defending this one idea that was clearly put together to make animating the dead feel like a consequentialist harm, but kinda falls apart because it's a justification that was slapped together after all the important elements had already been stated.


Precisely.

(I've been active in RPGs since the early 80s, and active in online discussions about RPGs since "online discussion" really became a thing in the early 90s. I missed much of the 3.x discussions because frankly I was done with D&D by that point, in part because things like the convoluted ad-hoc stuff in The Book of Bad Latin was a total turnoff to me.)

[EGplay]

AFB, and I'm too senile to keep track of what LM said vs what's just an example, but… does LM actually discuss "undead pollution"? If so, are there any spells which explicitly create "undead pollution" which do not have the [evil] tag? If everything that is explicitly called out as creating undead pollution has the evil tag, then there is zero incoherence in the explanation "undead pollution makes a spell evil".
I'm AFB as well so I can't confirm any LM content right now, but becoming a Baelnorn (good-aligned lich) is AFAIK not tagged 'evil'.

For me, the LM explanation given falls short because lengthening the presence of said undead (Inflict line) doesn't get tagged, so a short-lived presence is worse than extending said presence tenfold.
This in addition to the fact that there's no given reason why undead specifically cause this link while other NE uses, possibly equally short-lived, do not.

But moreover, the 'evil' tag is such a mess that it needs discarding or an overhaul, and the Animate Dead problem is just collateral.
I ignore the LM explanation because it puts us no closer to why Deathwatch is equally evil as making zombies, but Soul Bind isn't.

As to the rest of you post, the question of harm doesn't even need to come into it.
If taken to conclusion, the reasoning is not inclusive nor exclusive, and therefore fails to be definitive.

[Psyren]

Psyren, as the advocate for alignment tags being inherently justified... why is that?


I'll not deny that some other spells may be incorrectly labeled, or may need better explanation as to why they are (or aren't) [evil]. But that is completely irrelevant to why Animate Dead is labeled [evil]. The only things that can be compared are things with a similar "undead pollution" effect - which, it appears, is just things which create Undead. So, unless any of those lack the [evil] tag, the presence or absence of the evil tag on any other spell is completely irrelevant to this discussion.

Yep, thanks.



5e came out more than a decade after LM was released. That was plenty of time for more debates, plenty of time for more ideas to be bandied about, and the fact that the new edition rebooted a lot of things freed the devs up to hardcode their rules in. The reason we have more than just "it's vaguely bad because we say so" is because of people like Segev and Max being loudmouths about the flaws in the earlier systems.

What? 5e has even less than 3e did. "Only evil people cast this routinely" is an assertion, not a justification.


That's a lovely canard you've offered up there, "well because the authors weren't specifically trying to convince these two particular people they'd never heard of, way back when the book was written, then of course the authors don't need to be convincing at all."

But they were convincing. Just not to you. That's my point.

[EGplay]

I must be getting a bit senile too, twice now I forgot that I wanted to mention this:

A way back in this thread, Dragonexx gave us a post originally by BoxGrayonTales, which went deeper into this, also including among others Planar Adventures.

They pointed out several more problems with this, amongst them ghosts, another form of (potentially) non-evil undead, and the fact you can sometimes get two souls from one person, as well as the unsatisfying "because undead are unnatural". (They went on explaining that there's no reason to see them as such, as some living creatures are also powered by NE.)

The conclusion arrived at was, to keep PA and petitioners, this mess, and more, consistent two additions were needed:
-living things having 2 souls, an Anima and an Animus
-Fiends are (unknowingly) used to power said Animus in an undead (as they share a surprising number of traits vis-a-vis NE, 'evil', holy water etc).

I'd copy-paste the whole thing in spoiler if I weren't AFK and on mobile.

Point being, there are even more problems with the 'evil' tag on general and undead in specific than being discussed; and if you want an example of a consistent explanation beyond those pointed out by Max, Segev et al, here's another.

[Max_Killjoy]

But they were convincing. Just not to you. That's my point.


It's unconvincing to any actual analysis, as laid out repeatedly.

Or if one doesn't just take the conclusion as axiomatic.

[Quertus]

The question is, and to my knowledge has been—is the [Evil] tag justified on Animate Dead?

Psyren's argument was working from the answer (yes, it is evil) to generate arguments why. The counterargument is "point me to the fact the risk factor is so high that it's considered always evil regardless of other circumstances," and claiming that the risk factor was simply so low that it shouldn't be considered evil.

Psyren's working off the axiom that the [Evil] tag is always correct. If this axiom is disproven, it validates the opposing argument that one must look at the details of the effects before passing moral judgement on an action or spell.

Questioning the foundation on which the argument is based is hardly irrelevant to the discussion. :smallconfused:

So, there are (at least) two parallel conversations: one involves questioning the foundation (is creating undead pollution adequate to make a spell evil?); the other involves consistency checking (if Animate Dead is evil, what else should be evil?). This is in relation to the latter. While it is valid to compare Animate Dead to anything for the former, for the latter, only comparing it to other spells with undead pollution matters.


I'm AFB as well so I can't confirm any LM content right now, but becoming a Baelnorn (good-aligned lich) is AFAIK not tagged 'evil'.

For me, the LM explanation given falls short because lengthening the presence of said undead (Inflict line) doesn't get tagged, so a short-lived presence is worse than extending said presence tenfold.
This in addition to the fact that there's no given reason why undead specifically cause this link while other NE uses, possibly equally short-lived, do not.

But moreover, the 'evil' tag is such a mess that it needs discarding or an overhaul, and the Animate Dead problem is just collateral.
I ignore the LM explanation because it puts us no closer to why Deathwatch is equally evil as making zombies, but Soul Bind isn't.

As to the rest of you post, the question of harm doesn't even need to come into it.
If taken to conclusion, the reasoning is not inclusive nor exclusive, and therefore fails to be definitive.

So, Inflict can be used to cause harm, not just prolong undead, and so is not innately evil, even if your logic were otherwise sound.

I'm all about explaining the underlying physics, but what does it matter whether it's explained why other spells don't cause undead pollution? If they list the ones that do, those are the ones that do. I was under the impression that it was fairly consistent, that creates undead -> undead pollution. Although the Baelnorn may complicate matters.

So, now we've got two competing / opposed philosophies, one of which says harm is essential, the other of which says harm is irrelevant?

[GreatWyrmGold]

True.

However, one notes that if you lean too far into these things as cosmic forces, you begin to end up with the failure state of such of a cosmology similar to the one depicted in A Practical Guide to Evil: Villains aren't really villains, Heroes aren't really heroes, stories themselves are physical law, are used as tools to kill each other with and both Angels and Demons just become two different flavors of massive jerk.
I wouldn't call that a failure state. Speaking as someone who's read APGE and quite enjoyed it, I think there are plenty of perfectly good stories you can tell when Good and Evil are little more than the shades different teams use to designate themselves, with some associated behaviors and whatnot. D&D is trying to let people tell those stories, too, giving them the tools in the alignment system needed to tell them.


its either that or your end up with heavy-handed prophecies forcing someone to become a chosen one to defeat an evil. which carries its own bunch of problems regarding free will.
Chosen One stories have their problems, but take out the destiny aspect (which D&D doesn't really touch on) and you've got the same ingredients as can be found in dozens of classic fantasy stories. (Which often have their own problems regarding things like free will, but that's a discussion for another time.) D&D is trying to let people tell those stories, too, giving them the tools in the alignment system needed to tell them.

If it sounds like D&D tried to design its alignment system to accommodate as many directly opposed ideas about what "alignment" should be as possible...you're pretty much right. There's a reason the core books are always so light on fluff that goes beyond standard fantasy tropes (with the odd exception, e.g. dragonborn).



:smallconfused:I walked in here to crack a (bad) joke about how applying the same rational used to justify Undead = Evil should result in repercussions when trapping any other energy/elemental source on the Prime. My comments that you're replying to were a response to a direct claim someone made to me that this was "important". If someone makes a direct statement to you then yes, you are indeed allowed to respond to it.
Mechalich gave a specific context where it's important (D&D morality). You said "No, this is a stupid design decision, it's not important" without regard for the context given. It came off as saying "D&D morality doesn't matter, so discussions about it don't matter". If you think that's true, cool I guess, but this ain't the thread or you.



So, if D&D is not built on a harm-based philosophy of evil, everything you say falls apart, *unless* you can prove (unlike, say, all the Philosopher's who have come before you) that the definition of evil *must* be based on harm.
D&D cannot be "built on" any particular philosophy. Philosophy, logic, mathematics, and so on are abstract tools used to analyze the world; they are often useful at describing it, but do not actually exist in any real sense. There is no "number two" out there in the void, just things that can be described with that term.
For someone who doesn't believe in objective morality, it doesn't make sense to say that another world could be based on different morality, any more than it would to say that Mars has a different political system than Pluto. Political systems, like morality, are just human constructs.

(Someone who does think morality is objective would obviously be able to conceive of worlds built on different objective moral frameworks, but I'm not sure any of those are in this thread.)



As dumb as it might be to say it, the flat earth thing is a political topic so I'm giving it a wide berth.
No, it is a scientific topic. The shape of the Earth is an objective fact; theories about it can be tested against measurements and observations made to determine the true shape of the world. Meanwhile, politics are abstract social constructs made by humans to describe general policies taken to achieve some goal. The fact that some people ignore the scientific method and assert non-scientific claims about a scientific subject, leading to widespread non-scientific arguments about said subject, does not make the scientific subject under discussion political!
As I said last post, if we accepted that, we'd have to accept that every scientific subject with some vocal controversy around it was "political," no matter how inane the "controversy" was. We'd be unable to discuss any subjects that enough people argued about the nature of, because apparently that changes discussions of objective subjects into political discussions.
If you have a definition of "politics" which includes the shape of the Earth but excludes the scenario above, I'd love to hear it.



What? 5e has even less than 3e did. "Only evil people cast this routinely" is an assertion, not a justification.
If that was all 5e said, your argument would be correct. But it's not, and the other important parts were brought up earlier in the discussion you were actively participating in, often as an answer to a question you had asked. So either you are willfully ignoring what Anymage was talking about, or you don't recognize the "Undead become murderously uncontrolled if this spell isn't re-cast regularly" as a valid explanation for why ony evil people routinely animate dead for reasons you have failed to explain.


But they were convincing. Just not to you. That's my point.
Let me see if I understand this correctly.
Max, Segev, me, et al were arguing that the LM justification for animate dead's [Evil]-ness was insufficient. Your argument is that some people found it convincing.
In what way is that relevant to the point which was being made? Is it another "This is a reason why your opinion doesn't matter" argument, supported by nothing but assertions that "If some people accept it, this is fine"?

[Quertus]

I must be getting a bit senile too, twice now I forgot that I wanted to mention this:

A way back in this thread, Dragonexx gave us a post originally by BoxGrayonTales, which went deeper into this, also including among others Planar Adventures.

They pointed out several more problems with this, amongst them ghosts, another form of (potentially) non-evil undead, and the fact you can sometimes get two souls from one person, as well as the unsatisfying "because undead are unnatural". (They went on explaining that there's no reason to see them as such, as some living creatures are also powered by NE.)

The conclusion arrived at was, to keep PA and petitioners, this mess, and more, consistent two additions were needed:
-living things having 2 souls, an Anima and an Animus
-Fiends are (unknowingly) used to power said Animus in an undead (as they share a surprising number of traits vis-a-vis NE, 'evil', holy water etc).

I'd copy-paste the whole thing in spoiler if I weren't AFK and on mobile.

Point being, there are even more problems with the 'evil' tag on general and undead in specific than being discussed; and if you want an example of a consistent explanation beyond those pointed out by Max, Segev et al, here's another.

To be as rude as possible, one person's crazy talk, homebrew, and unsubstantiated theories have no place in a discussion of RAW - and even less in a discussion of the subsequent analysis of the morality of RAW.

To be fair, I thought some of it was interesting, and would make for the background of a fun campaign setting for me to Explore. But it was further out in left field than even I usually am.

2e specifically covered some of his points of confusion, and gave different answers than his fallacious conclusions.

[redwizard007]

Can we ignore Animate Dead for a moment and go back to a missed point?

Death Knell is as [Evil] as Animate Dead. Somehow moreso than just stabbing someone and casting a buff spell.

We know that [Death] spells are not inherently evil. See Finger of Death.

So far as I know, Death Knell does not channel negative energy or increase free willed undead.

It is exactly as evil as casting Animate Dead.

Or, to reframe it, casting Animate Dead is only as evil as stabbing someone you would kill anyways, then applying a buff to yourself.

Psyren, as the advocate for alignment tags being inherently justified... why is that?

Have you forgotten the first line of Death Knell?

You draw forth the ebbing life force of a creature and use it to fuel your own power...

Does that sound like something a good person would do?

[Lord Raziere]

Have you forgotten the first line of Death Knell?

You draw forth the ebbing life force of a creature and use it to fuel your own power...

Does that sound like something a good person would do?

It sounds like an excellent tactic in war or battle to deny resources to your enemy while giving resources to yourself, thus enough for anyone to use it as justification to win and protect whatever they hold sacred over whatever enemy they're fighting, so....if your going to fight and kill, why does it matter so much the method aside from personal preference? I mean if your concerned about the enemy suffering an inhumane painful death, just speed it the drain so that they die before they feel anything.