Why is creating undead Evil? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Venger

2020-09-19, 10:53 PM

CIDE

2020-09-19, 11:09 PM

As mentioned above there's the issues with Negative energy. Which, as far as I know, isn't inherently evil it DOES cause evil things to happen or exist. In addition to that, Many undead that are created are evil as a default. Otherwise, I don't think necromancy and undead would or should be an evil thing. Mostly playing devil's advocate here.

SangoProduction

2020-09-19, 11:13 PM

That's certainly true in real life where there's no rez, but it really isn't in dnd. There are many ways to produce meat of your own species to dine on. Even if you need to consume an actual creature for some reason, you can do so consensually while they have pact of return up and a nipple clamp of exquisite pain on or are sedated and they'll pop back good as new when you're done.

None of this really applies either in a setting where death is reversible.

creating undead isn't evil and you don't think so either, so why not leave it at that?

creating undead is Evil because the rules were written like a million years ago and they, like orcs and goblins or whatever were intended as faceless paper tigers for pcs to mulch for experience. There wasn't any intent that they would function as other intelligent races within the setting so they didn't write in rules that would entitle them to such treatment. it's just normal necrophobic prejudice.

Death may be reversible, but not trivially so. Especially not with the same triviality as one can kill or raise undead. Unless you're in the tippyverse, where literally nothing matters, which seems to be the perspective you're coming from. Most campaigns don't take place in settings with infinite and available magic. Or if they do, it's a cyberpunk scenario. Otherwise there's not really any story to be told. Sort of like why most sci-fi tends towards the unrealistic, because advanced tech really has no reason for conflict (nor personal visits to planets with especially human-like aliens).

"Why not leave it at that?" Because that's not intellectually stimulating. Going "I have my position, and I will never concede any ground, or consider the other side in any way" is boring, if more than troublingly common. So I set it as a challenge for myself. Entertain the other side of the argument. Come up with something that justifies it as being Evil, but doesn't fall into the pit falls of the more boring excuses.

PoeticallyPsyco

2020-09-19, 11:24 PM

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-09-19, 11:59 PM

I like that explanation.

There's also the fact that undead are almost universally evil themselves, so by raising zombies and skeletons you're bringing evil into the world quite directly. Sure, they're under your control, but you're basically gambling the safety of any innocents nearby that you won't lose control. And while you may accomplish enough good to outweigh that risk, this is D&D: you could have literally taken the same experience and effort you spent learning to raise the dead and learned something else about as effective, so choosing necromancy is, at best, a little bit selfish and reckless. (With a caveat that this only applies under most circumstances; there are always exceptions.)Zombies and skeletons are entirely unintelligent and thus cannot have morality, unless they're animated by [Evil] energies, which negative energy is not. And neither of them have any kind of motivation at all, not even instinctual ones, and they literally stand there and do nothing until the once-living bits they're composed of turn to dust unless commanded to do something in particular.

PoeticallyPsyco

2020-09-20, 01:00 AM

Zombies and skeletons are entirely unintelligent and thus cannot have morality, unless they're animated by [Evil] energies, which negative energy is not. And neither of them have any kind of motivation at all, not even instinctual ones, and they literally stand there and do nothing until the once-living bits they're composed of turn to dust unless commanded to do something in particular.

I was under the impression that zombies and skeletons would, if without orders, attack living things that they detected. I freely admit that may be totally wrong; I could definitely be getting mixed up with some other source/setting. However, skeletons and zombies are both "always neutral evil".

the_tick_rules

2020-09-20, 01:02 AM

Zombies and skeletons are entirely unintelligent and thus cannot have morality, unless they're animated by [Evil] energies, which negative energy is not. And neither of them have any kind of motivation at all, not even instinctual ones, and they literally stand there and do nothing until the once-living bits they're composed of turn to dust unless commanded to do something in particular.

zombies and skeletons are always neutral evil. liches are always something evil. ghouls and ghasts are always chatoic evil. at least in the online resource its a bit late to go checking my monster manuals. maybe the grunts are motivated by evil instinct rather than evil intelligence but seems for most undead evil is their thing.

Segev

2020-09-20, 01:20 AM

The biggest problem I have with this formulation is that it is the act of casting animate dead is evil, per the rules, due to having the [evil] descriptor. So it's not just "permitting" it that leads to evil due to social pressures. Something about the very act of casting the spell is inescapably evil. An act that, somehow, causes harm in a directly traceable (if not obvious or noticeable) way.

And it's something either about animating skeletons and zombies at all, or about how the process of casting the spell works.

"It increases negative energy in the world" doesn't cut it, for me. By that logic, you could make up for it by getting enough cure spells to flood a countervailing amount of positive energy. Also, casting healing spells would be [good].

"It creates undead that will attack the living if uncontrolled" doesn't work, either: it's possible to take sufficient precautions to mitigate that below the likelihood that a fireball accidentally causes a wildfire that burns down a town. It would be the failure to take such precautions that would be evil, not the creation of the undead.

It can't be that it drags souls back from the afterlife, either, because that's way too powerful for the spell and the spell effect doesn't have any ancillary impacts that might be expected. The undead are mindless, for one thing. For another, it's theoretically possible for somebody to leave behind a ghost, wraith, shadow, or other incorporeal spirit-only undead that leaves a body behind and still have their corpse animated as a zombie.

I don't have an answer that fully satisfies me. Best I've come up with are something involving fragmenting souls, causing pain even in the afterlife, inviting fiends to reach through to cause harm, or linking the outer planes to the negative energy plane in a way that can harm Outsiders that used to be the people whose corpse is being animated. None of which really satisfy me.

gogogome

2020-09-20, 01:22 AM

I contend, as many do, that there's nothing inherently Evil about raising the undead. But I also contend that the allowance of necromancy is Evil.

Ask your mother if, after she dies, you can turn her body into a rotting mass of flesh that bashes monsters skulls in until it is chopped to pieces.

She will be horrified and do everything she could to ensure her remains are not defiled after she passes away. Might even encase her coffin in cement.

Why would she do this? Why would she care so much that her remains aren't defiled?

Why is cannibalism evil? Why do people freak out at certain tribal cultures that eat the bodies of their enemies?

Answer that and you'll have your answer.

Saintheart

2020-09-20, 02:14 AM

I'll have a tilt at it. I am skating close to political discussion here, so please, don't resort to real-world religions and be careful with the philosophy in ripping this one apart.

One of the fundamental assumptions of [Good] is that an individual has a choice. Without choice, there can be neither Good nor Evil, since, rather like Schrodinger's Cat, Good or Evil cannot be observed until one makes an act that is, subjectively or objectively, good or evil. Good or evil intent can be held, and the choice to hold an evil intent in mind is itself evil since there is an act taking place by unconsciously directing the neurons or whatnot, but it is not as obvious as a physical act carrying that intent into effect. The notion of choice is ground right into the universe itself; it is arguable whether or not the universe exists in a conceptual sense without conscious intellect to observe it and make choices upon it.

Evil, being opposed to good, cannot argue with the fact of individual choice as such, but it can attempt to make individuals believe that their choices are meaningless. One such way is to horrify the living with the sight of the dead. Another way it conceptually opposes good is to mock the vessel that allows intent to be carried into good acts; that is, the defilement and sacrilege of the body which carried a conscious intellect and permitted it to make choices. The body is subject to the laws of entropy like all other substances, certainly, but a consciousness cannot cause an act to take place that is either good or evil without a physical form to act with.

The mindless undead, then, are mockeries of the individual's capacity to choose in life, which may be one of the few things that makes the conscious being an actual entity of consequence. They are forms without a consciousness driving them, vessels of choice hijacked by another. Or, in the case of undead such as zombies with an insatiable hunger, these too are perversions of choice, since they aren't in fact choice; something that is a mere stimulus-response mechanism is not making a choice, they are instances of causality only.

The conscious undead are evil for different reasons: attached to the consequence of consciousness is a finite period in which to make choices. Entropy will not be denied, and (if you assume a pedestrian cosmology like, say, the Realms) then an individual has only a limited time in which to make a choice of which god and what principles to live by. (Hence why, say with the Realms, you have the dreadful wall of the Faithless: you didn't want to make a choice when you still had time to do so, now you get to make no choices forever.) Conscious undead are a denial of this principle, as well as a mockery of conscious choice made during a lifetime.

Physical undead follow these principles; in the case of incorporeal undead it may be a different focus depending on whether the fluff is that an incorporeal undead is actually a soul kept in the physical realm beyond its time. That's a different type of evil, but still evil nonetheless.

Yanagi

2020-09-20, 02:38 AM

I contend, as many do, that there's nothing inherently Evil about raising the undead. But I also contend that the allowance of necromancy is Evil.

Why?

Same reason why cannibalism, on its own, is just being efficient with resources (ignoring health issues), but its allowance is Evil.

This is because of the incentives it creates. It turns dead people into a resource to be put to use. And when you have a resource you use, there's always going to be the temptation to simply create more of said resource.

You may choose not to. You may be morally opposed to it. You may vow against turning to the option.

But it's always going to hang over you like a dark cloud - tempting you to secure your own supplies. It will push you towards ... situations where you would "find" dead bodies. You have something to gain from slaughtering the bandits, as opposed to talking them down or giving mercy in a won engagement.

(puts on anthropologist hat)

The first part of this works, because in societies with a cannibalism taboo part of it is a horror of the idea of making a person food as the kind of ultimate violation of "treat people as an end, not means." This is particularly true of the in-group, where you're eating a person who is connected to other people through social bonds, such that it's hard to create emotional distance and think of them as -resources-. Weirdly, even cultures with culturally-constrained cannibalism--mortuary cannibalism or the cannibalism as part of warrior culture--the consumption of the body is never about reduction of the eaten to pure food. Mortuary cannibalism is about retaining a part of the deceased as an act of love, martial cannibalism is act of dominance--eat and gain the deceased's power, eat and demonstrate the total defeat of the deceased.

The second part sort of works, in that societies that sit close to starvation have particular cannibalism-specific fears...things like the wendigo myth...where there's a sort of downward spiral in which survival cannibalism is seen as opening a door. In effect, cannibalism is seen as a moral contagion: once you become accustomed to the idea of people as means to subsistence rather than as people to be interacted with and valued as people, you are transformed. In modern times, this kind of language is used to describe the psychological development of product serial murderers: there is a shift--sometimes fast, sometimes gradual--in which the killer understands that they do not require a human being to be alive to derive their particular form of power/control gratification, and since they lack empathy and concept of mind a lifeless responseless corpse is still a person for their purposes.

But what's not present is the third great fear that drives cannibalism taboo: the idea the integrity of the dead body affects the after-death existence of the deceased and the overall spiritual health of the society. Very few societies view a dead body as simply...nothing...and most have rules about what a corpse means and thus how a corpse, as an ex-person, should be handled. Cultures that do sky burials would be the notable exception, the abandonment of bodies to rot or be consumed pointedly indicating the emptiness of the vessel...but even deliberate body destruction is kind of "correct" body handling. While this fear overarches all kinds of body desecration--mutilation post-mortem, improper burial ceremonies or preservation of the body (or conversely, failure to fully destroy the body)...but cannibalism is a particularly intense version of this fear because becoming food implies something of the deceased becoming part another person in an irretrievable way...in effect the reverse of the tender sentiments of mortuary cannibalism; to eat another is to take ownership of their self.

One could make a case that most societies would mix and match the three taboo components listed above and arrive at a place where creating undead would be seen as fundamentally antisocial, and thus immoral.

However...just as I can identify societies in which cannibalism is not a taboo and remains a constrained, ritually-appointed activity seen as pro-social, I can postulate a society in which prescribed forms of animating the dead could be seen as pro-social and "good." Reanimation simply makes literal what many traditional societies believe about the familial dead: that they continue in death to work towards the benefit of the family/community/tribe. Just as societies have rules about proper and dignified handling of a dead body, they could postulate proper and dignified reanimation of a body; rather than seeing undeath as an impediment to normal post-death existence, they could view the continuation of the body as a healthy part of the soul's post-death existence.

Grandma's skeleton pulling a plough twice a year is not that far beyond how many people view their dead family as sources of aid, comfort, and insight, particularly if you look at mortuary cults and ancestor worship. There have been real life societies that have viewed the dead--mummy bundles of elite male figures in Andean cultures, ancestor bones buried under the house floor in SE Asia--as still-functioning members of the community.

Just like how putting out a bounty for rat tails was a well-intentioned plan to exterminate rats, the incentive structure was that it rewarded breeding rats and chopping off their tails more than it rewarded legitimate capture.

As such, while you are not necessarily evil for engaging in necromancy, you are always on a knife's edge from going down that route.

So, how's that sound? No need to invoke Cosmic Evil, divine proclamation, The Rulez, or any other contrivance, and without simply being petty or dismissive.
Just an observation of the motivations that such actions would inevitably create. One that is ultimately more human than many like to admit.

Yep. Necromancy is full of perverse incentives. You get to create people-like things that totally lack the autonomy of people; build enough and you become one of those people that never has to hear the word "no" and that path pretty much always leads to gross antisocial behavior. Sapient beings think socially: our ideas bounce off the people we are bonded with, and are filtered through our culture...a person that is completely alone (like prison in isolation) often experiences terrible cognitive distortions. It is hard to know who you are without reference points. A person whose MO is "I don't need actual people who I must compromise with, I can make substitutes that perform utility and that's just as good" have made a choice that is filled with power/control implications that are antisocial and unhealthy. Basically, they can be Ed Gein but able to achieve greater verisimilitude.

You have created a good anthropological explanation of why undead creation would not be an accepted social norm and viewed as an evil activity, but social norms are relative and fluid cross-culturally. But majescule-E Evil in fiction settings is often defined by its externality to human distinctions: what is bad is what is bad because some absolute force dictates that it is bad, the point is that there's no relativism.

Undead-making--and in particular its RPG version where there is a cookbook's-full of versions and variations to prepare--is a fiction, all explanations for its morality are contrivances and one contrivance is not superior to another. Depending on the setting parameters and the intention of the author, it may be very important undeath is tied to Cosmic Evil, The Rulez, etc. Undeath as a fictional subject can be attributed many different meanings. For example, making undead frequently is immoral because of derivative responsibility: undead go out and do things that harm people, that they would otherwise not be able to do were they just dead. This is certainly a presence in folkloric undeath, where the living people disturbing or desecrating the undead are seen as responsible parties. Furthermore, many settings incorporate the idea of undead as an environmental hazard, something that degrades the commonwealth just by existing. This idea is present in at least some D&D settings of old: negative energy that accompanies necromancy makes living things sick, the land unproductive, etc. And undeath is frequently tied to Cosmic Evil because the breach of "what is the right way to be dead" is the single largest possible violation of both societal norms--dead being a very well-defined social category--but also of the right-and-good cosmological fate of the dead.

Troacctid

2020-09-20, 03:09 AM

I run a lot of games in Eberron, and I typically use the negative-energy-as-pollution explanation espoused by the Undying Court and the Church of the Silver Flame, because, like, I think it makes a lot of sense. People can grok why the villains from Ferngully or Captain Planet are evil, y'know? But I think it also makes for more interesting stories if the negative impacts are not immediately obvious and observable—more "hole in the ozone layer" than "river clogged with sludge," to continue the metaphor. It fits in with the moral ambiguity that you see a lot in Eberron, where the line between good and evil is sometimes blurry.

Then, of course, you toss in a plot twist that throws everything into a new light. Like, Karrnathi undead are directly controlled by Katashka the Gatekeeper, and soon they will turn on the fools who animated them, unleashing a bloodbath that will free the dark Overlord! Or, maybe the Undying Court's plan to flood the world with positive energy to destroy all undead is going to kill a large percentage of the population of Khorvaire via positive energy overload! Either way works. Because ultimately, moral puzzles are fun, but we're here for epic fantasy battles between good and evil, am I right?

(puts on anthropologist hat)

[...]
That...is a fantastic take. I love it. 👏👏👏

Khedrac

2020-09-20, 03:16 AM

I would think the whether the process of creating undead is evil or not depend on the game (world)'s definition of what you are doing.
This links back to earlier versions of (A)D&D where skeletons and zombies were not evil in their own right...

Consider Durkon the vampire: in the OotS world it's not Durkon's soul that is driving the undead, it is the evil spirit (demon?) that has been summoned into the body that is in control. So, what has actually been done:
1. Durkon's soul has been bound in his dead body stopping it from reaching the afterlife.
2. An evil spirit has been summoned intot he world.
I think most would agree that both of these actions are "evil" (though with all the debates about how souls/petitioners fare on the lower planes in the standard D&D cosmology, it might be a blessing for dead evil people).

Now: on to animate dead.
1. The person now cannot be raised/ressurected until the animated corpse is found/killed. I will actually give this a pass (though still slightly evil) - the number of people for whom this is a valid penalty is small (though see Nodwick (http://comic.nodwick.com/?comic=2009-09-04) also click next).
and, this is where it depends on the gameworld:
If the person cannot be ressurected, does this mean that the soul is also barred from the afterlife? If yes, then again this is an evil act.
Also, is the animating force an evil spirit? If it is, even though it is not free-willed, then summoning it is an evil act, and if it remains in the world, free to wreak havloc after the destruction of its host, it's a bigger evil act.

Personally I was not in favor of switching skeletons and zombies from neutral to evil, but it fit with the removal of all the rest of the non-evil undead (e.g. arch liches), and I think it clear that the authors of 3rd Ed wanted to draw a clear line on what was and wasn't evil. I don't think we can say it was deeply rooted in the origins of D&D, because the ambiguity that used to exist was removed. More likely to me is that this was WotC not wanting to give Hasbro any grounds for complaint.

hamishspence

2020-09-20, 05:04 AM

Ghosts are still "Alignment - Any" rather than "Alignment - Any Evil" in 3.5, not just 3.0.

Archliches were never in the 3.0 MM in the first place - they were only in Monsters of Faerun - a 3.0 book, but one that was updated to 3.5 with the online web enhancement.

So, while skeletons and zombies were "moved from Neutral to Evil" I don't think it's fair to say that archliches were "removed from the game" in 3.5. Several FR 3.5 books mention them.

Khedrac

2020-09-20, 05:52 AM

Ghosts are still "Alignment - Any" rather than "Alignment - Any Evil" in 3.5, not just 3.0.
Wow - that I had not spotted and it doesn't entirely make sense given their abilities.

Archliches were never in the 3.0 MM in the first place - they were only in Monsters of Faerun - a 3.0 book, but one that was updated to 3.5 with the online web enhancement.
That was rather my point, I did not know they had even made it in to MoF - they were a 2nd Ed non-evil undead.

So, while skeletons and zombies were "moved from Neutral to Evil" I don't think it's fair to say that archliches were "removed from the game" in 3.5. Several FR 3.5 books mention them.
As per earlier comment, I was unaware they had made it across - thank-you.

redking

2020-09-20, 06:01 AM

hamishspence

2020-09-20, 06:16 AM

Wow - that I had not spotted and it doesn't entirely make sense given their abilities.

Theirs vary enormously depending on the ghost (one to 3 abilities, from a list of 7). But according to Complete Divine, a ghost is very much a soul - and not one trapped in a body controlled by a malign intelligence, as with some other undead.

Makes sense to me that their alignment in life, would carry over.

Unavenger

2020-09-20, 08:23 AM

Because the 3.5 devs were hacks who thought that raising a skeleton with negative energy was Bad but that raising it by shoving a [Good]-aligned outsider lock, stock and barrel into the creature's corpse was Good, and forcing an angel to serve you is Good but forcing a demon to serve you is Bad unless you're That One Class That Can Do The Bad Things And They're Not Bad, that BDSM is Bad and that killing The Bad People was Good - creating undead is evil because it follows the same Because I Said So kind of morality as the rest of 3.5, and not because of any coherent moral philosophy that would actually prevent it.

Blackhawk748

2020-09-20, 08:59 AM

From an entirely mechanical point of view there is no way that a 3rd level spell is stopping someone's soul from going to the afterlife, because there are very few ways to do that and all of them require you to grab the soul.

On another note, they are mindless and "do nothing unless instructed" so they shouldn't have a moral alignment in the first place.

And finally, while animate dead has the Evil tag, Fell Animate has no such language so you can totally go make Zombies without Evil implications.

Basically, if you look to hard the only answer is, "Because the Devs/Good God's said so". We can make our own logical reasons, but the pieces they give us generally indicate that making mindless undead isn't evil, though it could be easily abusable

Ashtagon

2020-09-20, 10:22 AM

Extending this logic, let's suppose you had a spell that would create undead, but ONLY if the "raw material" was from an inherently evil race - mindflayers perhaps (let's assume for the sake of argument that eating brains is inherently evil, and they are biological incapable of substitutes). Would such a spell be inherently Good?

It's best not to examine these things too closely. Certainly, the game authors didn't. Better minds than ours (and theirs) have pondered the question, "What is Good?"

Segev

2020-09-20, 10:40 AM

I may not be able to explain why creating undead is evil, but I know evil when I see it. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it#:~:text=The%20phrase%20was %20used%20in,Ohio.&text=Though%20%22I%20know%20it%20when,himself%20in %20his%20short%20concurrence.)

The trouble with this formulation is that Miko also knows evil when she sees it. Even after losing her Paladin power to detect it at will.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-09-20, 11:33 AM

What about animate objects? It's entirely usable on a corpse, since said corpse has no Wis or Cha scores, and thus it is an object.

Unavenger

2020-09-20, 11:37 AM

What about animate objects? It's entirely usable on a corpse, since said corpse has no Wis or Cha scores, and thus it is an object.

I mean, yeah, the fact that animate dead on a corpse is Evil, animate objects on the same corpse is nothing, and animate with the spirit on the same corpse is not just Good but Exalted is part of the sticking point for alignment making sense, here.

Silly Name

2020-09-20, 12:25 PM

There's the fact that, apparently, having your body turned into a undead stops you from being resurrected, full stop. While obviously your soul is still in the appropriate afterlife, this points to undead's mere existence messing up with some sort of Cosmic Balance.

Maybe the foul energies animating the body twist the normal flow of life, maybe they go against the nature of the universe. Many things in D&D are literally "because the Universe said so" - Good and Evil aren't treated as matters of mortal morality, but as objective, quantifiable laws of the cosmos. We even have spells that can detect if something is Good or not.

ShurikVch

2020-09-20, 01:15 PM

Well, walking dead are one of the oldest supernatural fears (along with hags and werecreatures) - apparently, it goes all the way to the Stone Age
Thus - creation of them being Evil is a knee-jerk reflexive assumption (and you know what they say about assumptions)

zombies and skeletons are always neutral evil. liches are always something evil. ghouls and ghasts are always chatoic evil. at least in the online resource its a bit late to go checking my monster manuals. maybe the grunts are motivated by evil instinct rather than evil intelligence but seems for most undead evil is their thing.
Archlich and Baelnorn are Good
Phantom Steed (Stand and Deliver) is Lawful Good
Ghost, Frostfell Ghost, and Necropolitan are of any alignment
Blood Amniote, Crawling Slaughter (Dragon #309), Crypt Thing, Death Scarab Swarm, Forlorn Husk, Gravecrawler, Mourner, Rancid Beetle Zombie, Revenant, and Strahd’s Skeletal Steed are always Neutral
Corpse Gatherer and Ghost Brute are usually Neutral
Humbaba (Dragon #334) is usually Lawful Neutral
Taunting Haunt (Monster Manual V) is Chaotic Neutral
Curst is Chaotic (any)
Mummy is "Usually lawful evil" - which mean it can be non-Lawful or/and non-Evil

For a creation of Undead - Oath of Blood and Seed of Undeath spells, Fell Animate and Fell Drain metamagical feats, and Deathless Master's Touch class feature aren't labeled with [Evil] tag

I'll have a tilt at it. I am skating close to political discussion here, so please, don't resort to real-world religions and be careful with the philosophy in ripping this one apart.

One of the fundamental assumptions of [Good] is that an individual has a choice. Without choice, there can be neither Good nor Evil, since, rather like Schrodinger's Cat, Good or Evil cannot be observed until one makes an act that is, subjectively or objectively, good or evil. Good or evil intent can be held, and the choice to hold an evil intent in mind is itself evil since there is an act taking place by unconsciously directing the neurons or whatnot, but it is not as obvious as a physical act carrying that intent into effect. The notion of choice is ground right into the universe itself; it is arguable whether or not the universe exists in a conceptual sense without conscious intellect to observe it and make choices upon it.

Evil, being opposed to good, cannot argue with the fact of individual choice as such, but it can attempt to make individuals believe that their choices are meaningless. One such way is to horrify the living with the sight of the dead. Another way it conceptually opposes good is to mock the vessel that allows intent to be carried into good acts; that is, the defilement and sacrilege of the body which carried a conscious intellect and permitted it to make choices. The body is subject to the laws of entropy like all other substances, certainly, but a consciousness cannot cause an act to take place that is either good or evil without a physical form to act with.

The mindless undead, then, are mockeries of the individual's capacity to choose in life, which may be one of the few things that makes the conscious being an actual entity of consequence. They are forms without a consciousness driving them, vessels of choice hijacked by another. Or, in the case of undead such as zombies with an insatiable hunger, these too are perversions of choice, since they aren't in fact choice; something that is a mere stimulus-response mechanism is not making a choice, they are instances of causality only.

The conscious undead are evil for different reasons: attached to the consequence of consciousness is a finite period in which to make choices. Entropy will not be denied, and (if you assume a pedestrian cosmology like, say, the Realms) then an individual has only a limited time in which to make a choice of which god and what principles to live by. (Hence why, say with the Realms, you have the dreadful wall of the Faithless: you didn't want to make a choice when you still had time to do so, now you get to make no choices forever.) Conscious undead are a denial of this principle, as well as a mockery of conscious choice made during a lifetime.

Physical undead follow these principles; in the case of incorporeal undead it may be a different focus depending on whether the fluff is that an incorporeal undead is actually a soul kept in the physical realm beyond its time. That's a different type of evil, but still evil nonetheless.
And what's about the making Undead from the low-Int or Mindless creatures?

(puts on anthropologist hat)

The first part of this works, because in societies with a cannibalism taboo part of it is a horror of the idea of making a person food as the kind of ultimate violation of "treat people as an end, not means." This is particularly true of the in-group, where you're eating a person who is connected to other people through social bonds, such that it's hard to create emotional distance and think of them as -resources-. Weirdly, even cultures with culturally-constrained cannibalism--mortuary cannibalism or the cannibalism as part of warrior culture--the consumption of the body is never about reduction of the eaten to pure food. Mortuary cannibalism is about retaining a part of the deceased as an act of love, martial cannibalism is act of dominance--eat and gain the deceased's power, eat and demonstrate the total defeat of the deceased.
One more (often overlooked) reason for cannibalism - the reprisal: say, Batak (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batak) ate their criminals

What about animate objects? It's entirely usable on a corpse, since said corpse has no Wis or Cha scores, and thus it is an object.
The example - despite I used it too in the past - isn't RAW-clear: we're still don't know if corpse is an object in terms of animate objects

Segev

2020-09-20, 01:37 PM

And what's about the making Undead from the low-Int or Mindless creatures?

This is, indeed, a major point in trying to nail down what, precisely, is inherently evil about casting animate dead. The rules fully support creating bone rat and corpse rat swarms with it, as both are skeletons or zombies well within the HD limits. Since controlling them isn't really a problem any more than controlling your fireball or your summoned monster from summon monster III, no "but if you lose control" clauses really justify making the casting of it automatically evil.

An example that doesn't apply to animate dead as written (since such requirements would be spelled out in the spell somewhere) would be if it required the sacrifice/murder of an intelligent creature to make it work. That would make the casting inherently evil, no matter how beneficent the use of the undead thus created was. It also is said that [evil] spells don't automatically make you turn evil for casting them, even for purely selfish reasons, as long as you don't make a habit of it. So whatever inherent evil there is to the casting must be minor enough to be uncomfortable for the good-aligned, and maybe not something neutral people would be happy doing if they had a better option, but can't be as egregious as murder.

Moreover, preparing the spell isn't evil. Just casting it. So whatever it is must be part of the casting of the spell, not something we can relegate to what you did off-screen when preparing it.

illyahr

2020-09-20, 02:29 PM

farothel

2020-09-20, 03:20 PM

Actually it's not always evil. It depends on the system you use. In Pathfinder 2E the animate dead spell doesn't have the evil trait. Granted, it only lasts for 1 minute, so it's not permanent, which might be the reason, but it's not evil.

Vaern

2020-09-20, 04:02 PM

There's the fact that, apparently, having your body turned into a undead stops you from being resurrected, full stop. While obviously your soul is still in the appropriate afterlife, this points to undead's mere existence messing up with some sort of Cosmic Balance.
That's not entirely true. Being turned into an undead creature prevents Raise Dead from working, but [True] Resurrection can still revive someone who has been reanimated and then destroyed. The line saying that undead creatures can't be revived in Resurrection and True Resurrection means that you can't revive, for example, a vampire, but you can revive the creature that the vampire was before becoming undead. The fact that lower-level resurrections don't work, though, would appear to be evidence that becoming undead does somehow scar the soul of the creature whose body is being defiled by negative energy.

ShurikVch

2020-09-20, 04:05 PM

On another note, they are mindless and "do nothing unless instructed" so they shouldn't have a moral alignment in the first place.
Fun fact: in the d20 Modern, it works in that exact way:

Allegiances: A skeleton loses any previous allegiances and adopts a new allegiance to its creator. This allegiance cannot be broken.

Allegiances: A zombie loses any previous allegiances and adopts a new allegiance to its creator. This allegiance cannot be broken.

Human Zombie: CR 1⁄2; Medium-size undead; HD 2d12 plus 3 (Toughness feat); hp 16; Init –1; Spd 30 ft.; Defense 11, touch 9, flat-footed 11 (–1 Dex, +2 natural); BAB +0; Grap +1; Atk +1 melee (1d6+1, slam); Full Atk +1 melee (1d6+1, slam); FS 5 ft. by 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.; SQ undead, move or attack action only; AL none or creator; SV Fort +0, Ref –1, Will +3; AP 0; Rep +0; Str 13, Dex 8, Con —, Int —, Wis 10, Cha 1.
Skills: None.
Feats: Toughness.
Possessions: Burial clothes.

noob

2020-09-20, 04:09 PM

Because with those spell slots used to create undead you could be creating cute and harmless lantern archons or undyings.
Unless you are creating undead with level 2 spell slots or lower level spell slots but then it is usually by killing a creature (which is not necessarily evil).

That's not entirely true. Being turned into an undead creature prevents Raise Dead from working, but [True] Resurrection can still revive someone who has been reanimated and then destroyed. The line saying that undead creatures can't be revived in Resurrection and True Resurrection means that you can't revive, for example, a vampire, but you can revive the creature that the vampire was before becoming undead. The fact that lower-level resurrections don't work, though, would appear to be evidence that becoming undead does somehow scar the soul of the creature whose body is being defiled by negative energy.
Low level resurrection spells basically requires the body to not have suffered from too much damage(ex: if the head is cut you can not ressurect).
So if body damage counts then undead creation might just be damaging the body itself and not the soul (ex: the corpse lose all its flesh when turned in a skeleton and maybe it rots instantly when turned into a zombie and so on).

ShurikVch

2020-09-20, 05:28 PM

Note: Sticks and Stones spell (Shining South) isn't [Evil], but gives you access to Energy Drain at level 5+...

Saintheart

2020-09-20, 06:57 PM

Segev

2020-09-20, 07:24 PM

As said: there are different degrees and types of evil, but making undead from low-INT or Mindless creatures is still achieving the [Evil] aim of horrifying the living with the sight of the dead. Evil can be achieved by acts designed to destroy good, which include mockery or perversion of good's principles.

That would only work if you were guaranteed to show "the dead" to "the living."

No, it has to be something inherent to casting the spell. Either that, or something inherent to what animates the dead must be causing harm in a quantifiable way. No "ambient negative energy that may someday somehow do something bad somewhere." Somebody has to be being quantifiably harmed by it.

Doctor Despair

2020-09-20, 07:31 PM

That would only work if you were guaranteed to show "the dead" to "the living."

No, it has to be something inherent to casting the spell. Either that, or something inherent to what animates the dead must be causing harm in a quantifiable way. No "ambient negative energy that may someday somehow do something bad somewhere." Somebody has to be being quantifiably harmed by it.

Have you considered that maybe the spirits and negative energy used to animate undead entities may object to being used for such purposes? I thought not. It's not a story the Wizards would tell you. Typical anti-differently alive folk propaganda

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-20, 08:17 PM

Creating Undead is Evil for the same reason that nuclear power is Evil: it is morally unacceptable to work with things that are dangerous in the hands of people who aren't trained professionals.

Alternatively, the D&D alignment rules don't make any sense.

Saintheart

2020-09-20, 08:19 PM

That would only work if you were guaranteed to show "the dead" to "the living."

No, it has to be something inherent to casting the spell. Either that, or something inherent to what animates the dead must be causing harm in a quantifiable way. No "ambient negative energy that may someday somehow do something bad somewhere." Somebody has to be being quantifiably harmed by it.

There are multiple ways an act can be Evil. Evil can be evil in result or evil in principle.

Segev

2020-09-21, 12:26 AM

Have you considered that maybe the spirits and negative energy used to animate undead entities may object to being used for such purposes? I thought not. It's not a story the Wizards would tell you. Typical anti-differently alive folk propagandaThe ones animating skeletons and zombies are definedly mindless. They don't have the capacity to object any more than your computer has the capacity to object to posting to web forums.

One of the things I am not satisfied with but have toyed with is the notion that a portion of the corpse's prior soul is grabbed and dragged back. Just enough to give a metaphysical "shape" for the negative energy to flow through and bind to the corpse itself. This might be an ongoing discomfort or pain for the dead soul, in which they have no say. There are still things that create exceptions to the "it's always evil to cast it" rule with this explanation, though, and it's weird and feels a bit trite, which is why I find it unsatisfactory. But it is one I still toy with to see if I can shake a solid metaphysic out of it.

Creating Undead is Evil [because] it is morally unacceptable to work with things that are dangerous in the hands of people who aren't trained professionals.Anybody who can cast animate dead is at least a 5th level caster, and thus qualifies as a "trained professional."

Since the act of casting the spell is an evil act, it can't be anything about how responsibly the spell is or is not used that is in consideration, here.

Alternatively, the D&D alignment rules don't make any sense.
They make sense. They just don't make perfect sense, and are imperfectly or inconsistently applied by some writers. It's really only we who insist on picking everything apart who look at animate dead and demand to know what's so evil about it from base principles. "Oh, yeah, making undead's something villains iconically do" is enough for a lot of people. Not for me, mind, but I am here pointing out that this isn't a failure of the rules to make sense, just a failure of the rules to be consistent or rooted in base principles.

nedz

2020-09-21, 01:10 AM

It's the negative energy = evil, positive energy = good paradigm — but there are other views.

Positive energy and negative energy are just elemental forces no different to Fire and Cold — they even have their own elemental planes.

Druids are evil. They claim that they like animals, but they keep summoning them to watch them die painfully in combat.
The things I summon are already dead and so suffer no further pain. Now the ends to which we put our summons are the same; but I'm regarded by the cosmos as evil even though I cause less suffering in the world ?

Mechalich

2020-09-21, 01:51 AM

They make sense. They just don't make perfect sense, and are imperfectly or inconsistently applied by some writers. It's really only us nerds who look at animate dead and demand to know what's so evil about it from base principles. "Oh, yeah, making undead's something villains iconically do" is enough for a lot of people. Not for me, mind, but I am here pointing out that this isn't a failure of the rules to make sense, just a failure of the rules to be consistent or rooted in base principles.

It's really only animate dead, and the handful of other spells that create mindless undead, that is the problem. Creating intelligent undead is fairly well established as trapping/binding/entwining or otherwise doing something awful to the spirit of the being in question such that it doesn't end up going where it is supposed to go. This is fairly obviously a massive disruption of the cosmic system to the point that it angers even many clearly evil deities: Asmodeus and co would very much prefer that your soul end up in Hell like it's supposed to rather than run away to lichdom and potentially be lost eternally somewhere beyond standard planar boundaries.

But this doesn't seem to happen with regard to mindless undead, and of course in 2e - which is when all of the more complicated metaphysics of what happened after death was worked out in detail - creating mindless undead was not an evil act. As such, the best explanation is that the 3e design team simply made a category error by failing to distinguish between intelligent and mindless undead.

PoeticallyPsyco

2020-09-21, 02:16 AM

Maybe there's something inherently evil about obsidian in D&D-verse. Dumb, but possible.

As said: there are different degrees and types of evil, but making undead from low-INT or Mindless creatures is still achieving the [Evil] aim of horrifying the living with the sight of the dead.

If that were [Evil], then opalescent glare wouldn't be a [Death, Good] spell, despite using the powers of [Death] to terrify the living. Even good creatures can be affected, if they fail the save.

Noxangelo

2020-09-21, 02:26 AM

What about animate objects? It's entirely usable on a corpse, since said corpse has no Wis or Cha scores, and thus it is an object.

According to the DMG P. 300 "Dead" is a condition and therefore a corpse as a "Dead" creature may, by RAW, still technically count as a creature and not an object.

Silly Name

2020-09-21, 02:34 AM

Creating undead, even becoming a lich, only became evil in 3rd edition. Before that, they weren't. Negative energy and Necromancy weren't inherently evil either (even Cure spells were Necromancy before 3rd). They only became evil because the editor added his own religious and spiritual views when they edited the edition.

I mean, becoming a lich was tied to committing some dark, twisted and unspeakably evil act in AD&D too, right? I'm pretty sure that is enough to send most people who do turn into a lich towards the deep end of the alignment pool.

(Yes, there are exceptions, arch-liches, baelnorn, etc etc. Your average lich, however, must kill infants or drink the blood of puppies or whatever to become one)

noob

2020-09-21, 04:09 AM

Maybe obsidian can only be obtained by destroying the soul of a young angel?(going with the "the evil portion of the spell is the component")

Jack_Simth

2020-09-21, 05:07 AM

That's not entirely true. Being turned into an undead creature prevents Raise Dead from working, but [True] Resurrection can still revive someone who has been reanimated and then destroyed. The line saying that undead creatures can't be revived in Resurrection and True Resurrection means that you can't revive, for example, a vampire, but you can revive the creature that the vampire was before becoming undead. The fact that lower-level resurrections don't work, though, would appear to be evidence that becoming undead does somehow scar the soul of the creature whose body is being defiled by negative energy.
Ah, but there's the "and then destroyed" step. True Resurrection, which requires nothing of the subject's body, cannot revive someone if their body is walking around elsewhere as a shambling corpse. Cremate the shambling undead, however, and it works again.

ShurikVch

2020-09-21, 05:14 AM

I mean, becoming a lich was tied to committing some dark, twisted and unspeakably evil act in AD&D too, right? I'm pretty sure that is enough to send most people who do turn into a lich towards the deep end of the alignment pool.

(Yes, there are exceptions, arch-liches, baelnorn, etc etc. Your average lich, however, must kill infants or drink the blood of puppies or whatever to become one)
Actually, no: they kept exact mechanics of Lich transformation vague pre-3E (save for one Dragon article at the end of "Blue Box" era)

Monstrous Compendium vol. 1 listed both Lich and Demilich as "ALIGNMENT: Any", because "the lich has no interest in good or evil as we understand it"

Moreover, there is one more canon counterpoint:

https://caelestis-templares.com/images/forumfiles/Piazza/Trading%20Cards%20%285%29.JPGhttps://caelestis-templares.com/images/forumfiles/Piazza/Trading%20Cards%20%286%29.JPG

You can read more about Seragrimm the Just in the Oerth Journal (https://greyhawkonline.com/oerthjournal/) #33

Efrate

2020-09-21, 08:37 AM

It's not a negagive energy thing either since spells like enervation explicitly use negative energy and do not have the evil descriptor.

Segev

2020-09-21, 04:28 PM

Silly Name

2020-09-21, 07:03 PM

I think the specifically "unspeakably evil act" that is part of becoming a lich is a 3e addition. (They never specify the unspeakably evil act in question.)

I mean, if they told you about it, it wouldn't be actually unspeakably evil, would it?

Venger

2020-09-21, 08:22 PM

I mean, if they told you about it, it wouldn't be actually unspeakably evil, would it?

You make a sandwich and then cut it into rectangles horizontally so one half has both of the round lobes on it and one half is a rectangle.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-09-21, 08:41 PM

You make a sandwich and then cut it into rectangles horizontally so one half has both of the round lobes on it and one half is a rectangle.That's...

That's Disney evil!

137beth

2020-09-21, 09:22 PM

Ultimately, the reason is because one of the authors decided it should be evil and added the [Evil] tag without bothering to explain themself.

Personally, I'm not a fan, mainly because, as Unavenger said:

I mean, yeah, the fact that animate dead on a corpse is Evil, animate objects on the same corpse is nothing, and animate with the spirit on the same corpse is not just Good but Exalted is part of the sticking point for alignment making sense, here.

So whenever I run 3.5 I house-rule it out.
(BTW, may I have permission to put that quote in my extended sig?)

You can try to offer a retroactive explanation, but most simple-sounding "explanations" create new contradictions, as Segev keeps pointing out.

Saintheart

2020-09-21, 09:33 PM

You make a sandwich and then cut it into rectangles horizontally so one half has both of the round lobes on it and one half is a rectangle.

You monster. What's next, drinking tea with no milk in it?!

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-09-21, 09:53 PM

You monster. What's next, drinking tea with no milk in it?!Two words: vegan tofucheesecake.

Particle_Man

2020-09-22, 12:02 AM

If there were some anti-necromancer that specialized in creating Deathless (from Book of Exalted Deeds) would the OP arguments also apply to make this practice evil?

Troacctid

2020-09-22, 01:14 AM

You can try to offer a retroactive explanation, but most simple-sounding "explanations" create new contradictions, as Segev keeps pointing out.
What's the contradiction with pollution?

Segev

2020-09-22, 01:46 AM

What's the contradiction with pollution?

Mainly that any “pollution” argument for evil can be countered by doing something “purifying,” or otherwise mitigating it. It also is deeply unsatisfying on a fiction layer to have it be evil but not really do anything that seems very evil.

As well, if more good is done by the undead at your behest than whatever amount of “evil pollution” is generated, it isn’t net evil anymore.

The trouble with “evil pollution” is that it’s entirely fungible. Generic or specific good can counteract it. Evil’s true sting is in its non-fungible nature. You can’t beat up one kid and heal another’s broken leg and call it balanced. Even if the beating was required to perform the healing, the very act of viewing one kid as disposable to heal another is evil, because kids are not fungible.

D&D can tolerate a certain amount of that, but generic evil “pollution” is something that could just be cancelled one for one by generic goodness. Countered and overwhelmed, even. Making it okay to create as much as you want as long as you do enough good to overwhelm it.

There’s no overwhelming non-fungible evil deeds to be considered Good. At best, if you do evil with any regularity, you could be neutral. But fungible evil pollution doesn’t hold this property because the evil pollution isn’t doing anything and can be cancelled as immediately as you like, or even preemptively by a lot of good pollution, or generic good deeds.

Evil having substance needs to be more substantial than a generic miasma of malignancy that you’re informed you’re making worse but no reasonable amount of play would ever truly show its results.

Troacctid

2020-09-22, 01:52 AM

Vaern

2020-09-22, 03:54 AM

The argument that "evil pollution" doesn't matter because you can easily "clean it up" by being good has a major flaw in it. It actually requires you to put work into cleaning it up. I could toss an empty soda can out the window on my way to work with the expectation that eventually someone's going to clean it up, with no intention of doing it myself, and you know what? That would make me kind of an ass. And a week later, I might be driving to work and find a raccoon with its hand stuck in that empty can and realize that it was kind of a **** move to have tossed that can way back then. Now the damage has been done and it's too late to take it back, and the best that stopping to pick it up myself can do it prevent further collateral damage being caused by my negligence.
Even if you could clean up or counteract whatever evil comes into the world by making your zombies, there will still likely be ramifications and lasting effects if you don't do it fast enough... and even if you are responsible enough to use [Evil] magic without upsetting the cosmic balance, you still need to worry about all of the other would-be good necromancers cleaning up their mess before the consequences of their actions become apparent. Maybe eventually someone will come to clean up after them, but judging by the state of the highway just outside of town it seems pretty clear that people generally don't care about the consequences of pollution so long as the ramifications don't immediately affect them personally. It doesn't look very good for your argument.

ShurikVch

2020-09-22, 05:45 AM

Mainly that any “pollution” argument for evil can be countered by doing something “purifying,” or otherwise mitigating it. It also is deeply unsatisfying on a fiction layer to have it be evil but not really do anything that seems very evil.

As well, if more good is done by the undead at your behest than whatever amount of “evil pollution” is generated, it isn’t net evil anymore.

The trouble with “evil pollution” is that it’s entirely fungible. Generic or specific good can counteract it. Evil’s true sting is in its non-fungible nature. You can’t beat up one kid and heal another’s broken leg and call it balanced. Even if the beating was required to perform the healing, the very act of viewing one kid as disposable to heal another is evil, because kids are not fungible.

D&D can tolerate a certain amount of that, but generic evil “pollution” is something that could just be cancelled one for one by generic goodness. Countered and overwhelmed, even. Making it okay to create as much as you want as long as you do enough good to overwhelm it.

There’s no overwhelming non-fungible evil deeds to be considered Good. At best, if you do evil with any regularity, you could be neutral. But fungible evil pollution doesn’t hold this property because the evil pollution isn’t doing anything and can be cancelled as immediately as you like, or even preemptively by a lot of good pollution, or generic good deeds.

Evil having substance needs to be more substantial than a generic miasma of malignancy that you’re informed you’re making worse but no reasonable amount of play would ever truly show its results.
Note: most of spells which directly using Negative Energy are non-[Evil]: Circle of Doom, Inflict ... Wound line, Harm, Negative Energy Ray/Burst/Wave...
Actually, in the shape I encountered this argument, it was slightly different: It doesn't said anything about "Evil", but pointed the Negative Energy is dangerous and harmful for most living things (and, maybe, even for some non-living), thus - increasing its presence in the world is bad.

But even in that form, this argument is still a nonsense
Because in the same fashion, we can blame magic which:
create water - for the increase in global sea level,
conjures fire - for Global Warming,
using Positive Energy - for increasing number of oncological diseases (and attracting Ragnorra).

Quertus

2020-09-22, 10:35 AM

Sure, they're under your control, but you're basically gambling the safety of any innocents nearby that you won't lose control.

So, under this paradigm, is it building cars or driving cars that is evil?

I think the specifically "unspeakably evil act" that is part of becoming a lich is a 3e addition. (They never specify the unspeakably evil act in question.)

And then 5e forgot the point of becoming a lich at all and made them soul-vampires.

Becoming a Lich has always required evil acts, and they were specified (drinking a potion of dead babies and puppy blood is only part of it - you had to poison the baby with specific poisons, and other people with other poisons, and… etc… to make this potion).

Also, yes, 5e failed.

Note: most of spells which directly using Negative Energy are non-[Evil]: Circle of Doom, Inflict ... Wound line, Harm, Negative Energy Ray/Burst/Wave...
Actually, in the shape I encountered this argument, it was slightly different: It doesn't said anything about "Evil", but pointed the Negative Energy is dangerous and harmful for most living things (and, maybe, even for some non-living), thus - increasing its presence in the world is bad.

But even in that form, this argument is still a nonsense
Because in the same fashion, we can blame magic which:
create water - for the increase in global sea level,
conjures fire - for Global Warming,
using Positive Energy - for increasing number of oncological diseases (and attracting Ragnorra).

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, has specifically invented custom spells, Quertus' Heal Time I-IX, to undo the damage caused to the time steam by the casting of chronomantic spells (like Haste or Time Stop). Chronomancy is a school of magic where D&D was very specific that the entire school causes "pollution" damage. Yet those spells aren't labeled as "evil".

So, agreed, this argument doesn't hold up.

Alcore

2020-09-22, 11:39 AM

Why is creating undead Evil?(setting dependent)

Because they are beings of negative energy that hungers for the positive energy (which is all living creatures) and they generally lack any morals if intelligent. Those who remember their past lives can continue to do good out of habit but its now a habit not an Ideal.

Because (sometimes) you are literally binding the soul of another creature into servitude. Into a dead and forever rotting body that will slowly torment the target in one fashion or another.

I contend, as many do, that there's nothing inherently Evil about raising the undead. But I also contend that the allowance of necromancy is Evil.

Why?I have no idea why you are talking of a paradox. I also have no idea 'why' as it is your thoughts. Asking why like this is unproductive. Why what? :smallannoyed:

I can hardly conjecture on your own thoughts.

So, how's that sound?It sounds like I don't ever want to meet you if you are ever able to perform necromancy. Part of you sounds like you view everything as a resource (including the people) while another part sounds like you view necromancy (or evil magic) as sapient enough to push you towards your own corruption. Both are possible.

Just an observation of the motivations that such actions would inevitably create. One that is ultimately more human than many like to admit.you don't need to tell me how evil humans are. I know all too well... :smallsigh:

Segev

2020-09-22, 11:41 AM

Why is it a given that good cancels out evil like that? That's not how it works in Eberron.

If your factory pollutes a river, the river doesn't become unpolluted just because you generated that toxic waste while manufacturing medical supplies to donate to children's hospitals.The thing is, "evil pollution" doesn't do anything on its own even under the formulation we're given except "promote evil." So if you do generic good, you can easily counterbalance whatever evil is "promoted" by it.

And I call it fungible because if you cast a [good] spell for every [evil] spell you cast, you should generate as much "good anti-pollution" as you generate "evil pollution."

The argument that "evil pollution" doesn't matter because you can easily "clean it up" by being good has a major flaw in it. It actually requires you to put work into cleaning it up. I could toss an empty soda can out the window on my way to work with the expectation that eventually someone's going to clean it up, with no intention of doing it myself, and you know what? That would make me kind of an ass. And a week later, I might be driving to work and find a raccoon with its hand stuck in that empty can and realize that it was kind of a **** move to have tossed that can way back then. Now the damage has been done and it's too late to take it back, and the best that stopping to pick it up myself can do it prevent further collateral damage being caused by my negligence.
Even if you could clean up or counteract whatever evil comes into the world by making your zombies, there will still likely be ramifications and lasting effects if you don't do it fast enough... and even if you are responsible enough to use [Evil] magic without upsetting the cosmic balance, you still need to worry about all of the other would-be good necromancers cleaning up their mess before the consequences of their actions become apparent. Maybe eventually someone will come to clean up after them, but judging by the state of the highway just outside of town it seems pretty clear that people generally don't care about the consequences of pollution so long as the ramifications don't immediately affect them personally. It doesn't look very good for your argument.You can do it pro-actively, too. Give enough candy out to kiddos, and the puppy slushie you make out of live puppies to drink in front of other kids is "paid for."

Except that that isn't how it works with real good and real evil, as evidenced by how ridiculous "do good things for some kids to pay for being cruel to others" is in my very example, here. But the moment it's undefinable "evil pollution" that's just some sort of "well, um, there's more evil in the world," you can make up for it before or after with as much "goodness" as you need to do. This could just be spamming [good] spells to "pay" for it.

For the record, unless a [good] spell also does something inherently good, I am not in favor of spells having that label, either.

I don't mind animate dead being [evil]. I just want it, like the process of becoming a lich, to actually have something evil that you have to do to cast it.

SquidFighter

2020-09-22, 11:57 AM

That, and there is no actual garantee that positive energy neutrally cancel out negative energy.

You know, like summoning a water elemental doesn't in itself "cancel out" summoning a fire elemental.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-09-22, 11:58 AM

Troacctid

2020-09-22, 02:36 PM

Note: most of spells which directly using Negative Energy are non-[Evil]: Circle of Doom, Inflict ... Wound line, Harm, Negative Energy Ray/Burst/Wave...
Actually, in the shape I encountered this argument, it was slightly different: It doesn't said anything about "Evil", but pointed the Negative Energy is dangerous and harmful for most living things (and, maybe, even for some non-living), thus - increasing its presence in the world is bad.

But even in that form, this argument is still a nonsense
Because in the same fashion, we can blame magic which:
create water - for the increase in global sea level,
conjures fire - for Global Warming,
using Positive Energy - for increasing number of oncological diseases (and attracting Ragnorra).
That sounds like an argument people would make in-universe. The obvious counterargument is that all uses of negative energy don't need to be evil for animating the dead to be evil. Mabaran power can be channeled safely, and animate dead is unsafe. Like driving a car without an exhaust filter.

The thing is, "evil pollution" doesn't do anything on its own even under the formulation we're given except "promote evil." So if you do generic good, you can easily counterbalance whatever evil is "promoted" by it.

And I call it fungible because if you cast a [good] spell for every [evil] spell you cast, you should generate as much "good anti-pollution" as you generate "evil pollution."

You can do it pro-actively, too. Give enough candy out to kiddos, and the puppy slushie you make out of live puppies to drink in front of other kids is "paid for."

Except that that isn't how it works with real good and real evil, as evidenced by how ridiculous "do good things for some kids to pay for being cruel to others" is in my very example, here. But the moment it's undefinable "evil pollution" that's just some sort of "well, um, there's more evil in the world," you can make up for it before or after with as much "goodness" as you need to do. This could just be spamming [good] spells to "pay" for it.
...Every point here is wrong.

1. Mabaran pollution has tangible harmful effects on the environment.
2. It's not easily undone simply by casting positive energy spells, and certainly not at a 1:1 ratio.
3. Performing unrelated virtuous deeds doesn't exempt you from the damage you're doing.
4. The reason it sounds ridiculous is because it is ridiculous, for the reasons stated above.

While it is true that Irian energy can repair the damage done by Mabaran energy, the process is very slow because destroying something is always easier than rebuilding it, and casting [Good] spells doesn't do anything to help the process unless the spells are specifically designed for that purpose. Even if it did help, your undead would still be doing damage in the meantime. Increased use of undead during the Last War has only made the problem worse; some scholars have even speculated that Mabaran pollution was partially responsible for the Mourning.

gijoemike

2020-09-22, 02:58 PM

Honestly, unless an effect literally channels [Chaos], [Law], [Good], or [Evil] energy directly, or it summons or calls a being literally made from one of those things, it should not have any of those descriptors.

Even mindrape, despite the name, can be used for inherently neutral and even good things, such as teaching large amounts of information nigh instantaneously. It's only considered [Evil] because of the name and the book it is in.

And animate dead is only [Evil] because it's icky, not because it's actually [Evil]. No [Evil] energy is being channeled, and the undead it creates are mindless, completely lack any kind of self motivation whatsoever, and contain no [Evil] in them at all. Death and entropy aren't [Evil], because they're simply a part of the natural world, just like life and creation aren't. And life and creation can't be [Good] -- see Ragnorra, the positive energy elder evil.

Animate dead is odd because it is channeling negative energy. And you pointed out Negative energy isn't evil.

Also, it doesn't take into consideration how you got said body. Maybe it was a willful legal demand you do this after X died. Perhaps the caster doesn't want to do this.

It doesn't matter what the undead will do in 20 seconds after being raised or 20 years afterward. This spell and it being EVIL don't take that into consideration. Those actions will have good/evil consequences of their own. Yes, I stated GOOD in that sentence.

Why is the moment of bringing forth a mindless undead, incapable of morality, an EVIL act without argument (90% of all settings)?

GAMMA RADIATION

What? Life flows from Positive energy as decreed by the gods. When a caster has to channel negative energy against the natural order, it breaks something within. Raising the undead has nothing to do with gods ,devils, the heavens, hells, or intent. The strain of it is like exposing your soul to gamma radiation and no hazmat suit CAN exist.

This result of EVIL isn't morality, or channeling the substance of the lower hells. And this explanation is also why MindRape and Deathwatch are EVIL. Both of those spells result in good things more often than not on this board. It isn't about the use, its about how it exposes the caster's ?soul? to GAMMA RADIATION.

This is very much like Troacctid's comment about pollution. One cannot just clean up exposure with a counter effort. Its really difficult and effects last for years.

I like this explanation because it handles just the spell's casting. Most of these other responses deal with culture, morality, the fear caused later on, and are situational. None of those things are the actual casting of the spell. These spells aren't evil because of the name, or because they are icky, or because of channeling bad/evil things. They break the caster's "je ne sais quoi" (usually referred to as the Soul). All the souls in hell aren't evil, some are just broken beyond repair.

Casting this spell will break you a little bit, do you accept it? Yes or no.

Troacctid

2020-09-22, 03:03 PM

One of the fun side effects of this interpretation is that it's theoretically possible to research non-evil versions of the same spells, achieving the same result by healthier means.

gijoemike

2020-09-22, 03:18 PM

One of the fun side effects of this interpretation is that it's theoretically possible to research non-evil versions of the same spells, achieving the same result by healthier means.

There is a wizard ACF for necromancers only. You get a skeleton minion that is under your control like a familiar. You lose familiar when you take this ACF. I view that ACF exactly like you are describing. It is a long term ritual, more costly, and it doesn't scar the soul. Work a round's absolutely exist. Earlier in this thread the example of Animate Object on a corpse comes close to the same effect. Thematically very different, but the numbers are pretty close. Imbue with spirit is almost an exact work around.

Troacctid

2020-09-22, 03:25 PM

Well, the skeleton itself is still causing pollution by existing (cf. evil alignment despite being mindless), even though the ritual to create it is cleaner, so it's not a perfect solution, but it's a step in the right direction.

ShurikVch

2020-09-22, 03:30 PM

Animate dead is odd because it is channeling negative energy. And you pointed out Negative energy isn't evil.

Also, it doesn't take into consideration how you got said body. Maybe it was a willful legal demand you do this after X died. Perhaps the caster doesn't want to do this.

It doesn't matter what the undead will do in 20 seconds after being raised or 20 years afterward. This spell and it being EVIL don't take that into consideration. Those actions will have good/evil consequences of their own. Yes, I stated GOOD in that sentence.

Why is the moment of bringing forth a mindless undead, incapable of morality, an EVIL act without argument (90% of all settings)?

GAMMA RADIATION

What? Life flows from Positive energy as decreed by the gods. When a caster has to channel negative energy against the natural order, it breaks something within. Raising the undead has nothing to do with gods ,devils, the heavens, hells, or intent. The strain of it is like exposing your soul to gamma radiation and no hazmat suit CAN exist.

This result of EVIL isn't morality, or channeling the substance of the lower hells. And this explanation is also why MindRape and Deathwatch are EVIL. Both of those spells result in good things more often than not on this board. It isn't about the use, its about how it exposes the caster's ?soul? to GAMMA RADIATION.

This is very much like Troacctid's comment about pollution. One cannot just clean up exposure with a counter effort. Its really difficult and effects last for years.

I like this explanation because it handles just the spell's casting. Most of these other responses deal with culture, morality, the fear caused later on, and are situational. None of those things are the actual casting of the spell. These spells aren't evil because of the name, or because they are icky, or because of channeling bad/evil things. They break the caster's "je ne sais quoi" (usually referred to as the Soul). All the souls in hell aren't evil, some are just broken beyond repair.

Casting this spell will break you a little bit, do you accept it? Yes or no.
Let me remind it: Material Plane is a mixture of stuff from all the Inner Planes - which is, by definition, includes Negative Energy Plane

Positive Energy Plane isn't Good, and Negative Energy Plane - isn't Evil
They're the "Plus" and "Minus" of the universe

...Every point here is wrong.

1. Mabaran pollution has tangible harmful effects on the environment.
2. It's not easily undone simply by casting positive energy spells, and certainly not at a 1:1 ratio.
3. Performing unrelated virtuous deeds doesn't exempt you from the damage you're doing.
4. The reason it sounds ridiculous is because it is ridiculous, for the reasons stated above.

While it is true that Irian energy can repair the damage done by Mabaran energy, the process is very slow because destroying something is always easier than rebuilding it, and casting [Good] spells doesn't do anything to help the process unless the spells are specifically designed for that purpose. Even if it did help, your undead would still be doing damage in the meantime. Increased use of undead during the Last War has only made the problem worse; some scholars have even speculated that Mabaran pollution was partially responsible for the Mourning.
When why the heck Karrnath isn't Undead-infested wasteland?
Somehow, when books saying about Mabar contamination, they mentioning Aerenal, Breland, Eldeen Reaches, - but not Karrnath...

Troacctid

2020-09-22, 03:51 PM

When why the heck Karrnath isn't Undead-infested wasteland?
Somehow, when books saying about Mabar contamination, they mentioning Aerenal, Breland, Eldeen Reaches, - but not Karrnath...
That's like asking if global warming is real, why are there still blizzards?

Karrnathi undead exist precisely because Karrnath already contained Mabaran manifest zones (or "undead wastelands") that allowed for experimentation with more advanced forms of necromancy. As for the undead troops themselves, for most of the Last War, they fought primarily on the borders or in other nations, so it's not like they were all concentrated in Karrnath. It was only relatively recently that all undead troops were recalled back to Karrnath's borders. Incidentally, the Day of Mourning coincided with a large-scale Karrnathi operation in Cyre where they seized Cyran territory and were mustering forces there in preparation for invading Breland.

Segev

2020-09-22, 05:08 PM

Troacctid

2020-09-22, 05:31 PM

I have no idea what "mabaran pollution" is, and it sounds to me like "it has measurable effects on the environment" (if you're referring to D&D and not something real-world, and real-world environmental discussion would stem into politics and so I won't discuss it on this forum), is something made up post-hoc to justify it. The fact that whatever opposing "good pollution" is doesn't counter it sounds like asymmetry and also would perforce violate the rules about good-aligned spells being inherently good in order to justify evil-aligned spells being inherently evil.
Seeing as Eberron wasn't invented until after the release of the 3.5e Player's Handbook, yes, the animate dead spell's evil tag predates the setting's cosmology. It also posits a world where the evil tag makes sense for reasons that are internally consistent and are strong drivers of stories and conflicts in a campaign while also being flexible enough for a DM to push them to the background if desired and leaving plenty of room for moral ambiguity or black and white morality depending on the needs of the plot.

It's a great solution. It just requires you to relax your assumption that good and evil are perfectly symmetrical, which, frankly, doesn't seem like a very well-founded assumption to me in the first place.

Alcore

2020-09-22, 09:27 PM

Segev

2020-09-22, 11:05 PM

Seeing as Eberron wasn't invented until after the release of the 3.5e Player's Handbook, yes, the animate dead spell's evil tag predates the setting's cosmology. It also posits a world where the evil tag makes sense for reasons that are internally consistent and are strong drivers of stories and conflicts in a campaign while also being flexible enough for a DM to push them to the background if desired and leaving plenty of room for moral ambiguity or black and white morality depending on the needs of the plot.

It's a great solution. It just requires you to relax your assumption that good and evil are perfectly symmetrical, which, frankly, doesn't seem like a very well-founded assumption to me in the first place.

Relaxing that assumption leads to further paradox and contradiction.

Let's say that Mordenkainen decides to conduct an experiment, and constructs a chamber which can perfectly contain both good and evil energies of all sorts. He then sets up a pair of special spell traps within this chamber which constantly and consistently cast some sort of spell that has the [evil] tag and [good] tag, designed such that they pump equal quantities of "good pollution" and "evil pollution" into the chamber at a constant rate. If they are not opposites which cancel each other out, then the chamber becomes filled ever-more full with both concentrated Good and concentrated Evil, neither able to cancel out the other.

What happens in that chamber? What does all this concentrated good and evil actually amount to? If you need more than a white room to work with, let's say he manages to make something like his own version of a Dominion from the Demiplane of Dread. Not stealing one, not dealing with the Dark Powers, just making something remarkably like it: self-contained but big enough for a small civilization and some adventure to go on. He then sets that up to have a proportional-to-the-size-of-the-domain amount of good and evil pollution, again in equal amounts with equal flow rates, to pour into it. What does this do to the domain? What does all this ambient evil and good that is somehow not cancelling out make this domain look like?

If it helps, you can start by describing what two separate, otherwise-identical domains would look like with only [good] and only [evil] pollution being pumped into them. I have my own theories on this, but they lead to the two cancelling out when combined in Mordenkainen's experiment, so I am not going to suggest my theory and instead invite yours in hopes that I can understand what it is you're seeing as a sensible solution to this.

Troacctid

2020-09-22, 11:51 PM

Relaxing that assumption leads to further paradox and contradiction.

Let's say that Mordenkainen decides to conduct an experiment, and constructs a chamber which can perfectly contain both good and evil energies of all sorts. He then sets up a pair of special spell traps within this chamber which constantly and consistently cast some sort of spell that has the [evil] tag and [good] tag, designed such that they pump equal quantities of "good pollution" and "evil pollution" into the chamber at a constant rate. If they are not opposites which cancel each other out, then the chamber becomes filled ever-more full with both concentrated Good and concentrated Evil, neither able to cancel out the other.

What happens in that chamber? What does all this concentrated good and evil actually amount to? If you need more than a white room to work with, let's say he manages to make something like his own version of a Dominion from the Demiplane of Dread. Not stealing one, not dealing with the Dark Powers, just making something remarkably like it: self-contained but big enough for a small civilization and some adventure to go on. He then sets that up to have a proportional-to-the-size-of-the-domain amount of good and evil pollution, again in equal amounts with equal flow rates, to pour into it. What does this do to the domain? What does all this ambient evil and good that is somehow not cancelling out make this domain look like?
This sounds like an interesting experiment, but I don't see the paradox or contradiction in it. The DM decides what happens, and that then becomes the canonical interaction for the setting when combining opposing planar energies in a pressure cooker device. Most likely the effect you get is going to depend on the kind of dragonshards you used in the device, and if you lose control of it, it probably overloads and causes an explosion that collapses your lair with just enough time for the heroes to escape.

If it helps, you can start by describing what two separate, otherwise-identical domains would look like with only [good] and only [evil] pollution being pumped into them. I have my own theories on this, but they lead to the two cancelling out when combined in Mordenkainen's experiment, so I am not going to suggest my theory and instead invite yours in hopes that I can understand what it is you're seeing as a sensible solution to this.
You mean planes composed of Irian energy and Mabaran energy? How about...Irian and Mabar?

Or do you mean regions of the Material Plane that are saturated with Irian or Mabaran energy? That would be a manifest zone.

Segev

2020-09-23, 12:19 AM

This sounds like an interesting experiment, but I don't see the paradox or contradiction in it. The DM decides what happens, and that then becomes the canonical interaction for the setting when combining opposing planar energies in a pressure cooker device. Most likely the effect you get is going to depend on the kind of dragonshards you used in the device, and if you lose control of it, it probably overloads and causes an explosion that collapses your lair with just enough time for the heroes to escape.

You mean planes composed of Irian energy and Mabaran energy? How about...Irian and Mabar?

Or do you mean regions of the Material Plane that are saturated with Irian or Mabaran energy? That would be a manifest zone.No. I do not mean planes composed of Irian energy and Mabaran energy.

Mordenkainen isn't an Eberron character, and I have not been discussing Eberron. I even expressed confusion over this "mabar" thing, though I did glean that Eberron is what you were talking about with your reply about Eberron post-dating the writing of animate dead.

I'm talking about D&D in general.

Please answer my question regarding Mordenkainen's experiment wrt Great Wheel cosmology. I don't know enough about Eberron to have an intelligent discussion on the nature of "radiation" from its planes. And, for the purposes of this thread, I am entirely uninterested in it at this point. It certainly doesn't sound like the planes in Eberron have "evil pollution," but instead have some other kind of pollution that is being called "evil."

Troacctid

2020-09-23, 12:36 AM

Segev

2020-09-23, 12:45 AM

I'm talking about Eberron because it has a strong, internally consistent explanation why animate dead would be evil. If you're not interested in the setting, then I guess you can just take my word for it and concede that it's possible for an internally consistent explanation to exist.

From your description, the planes have themes beyond “good” and “evil.” If the explanation only works when you add setting assumptions not present in most D&D, it fails to suffice. I’m glad it works for you in Eberron games. But whatever it is about Mabar and Irnia that makes it possible to have them mix together into a coherent set of conditions when a region is saturated in both pretty well indicates that they aren’t just evil and good.

And, frankly, this could lead to too much Iranian radiation being a bad thing, too, meaning casting too many [good] spells could be an evil act. Which is its own contradiction.

So even in Eberron, there are contradictions that arise from the assumption that there is “evil radiation” that can coexist with “ good radiation” rather than cancelling our, and still having the rules regarding casting aligned spells being aligned acts.

If you INSIST on using Eberron, please explain what a melding of Irnia and Mabar would look like. Because again, what I can pick up from the scant details you offer is that something about them is not mutually exclusive. And I cannot see how that can make any amount of Iranian energy purely a good thing.

Troacctid

2020-09-23, 01:30 AM

From your description, the planes have themes beyond “good” and “evil.” If the explanation only works when you add setting assumptions not present in most D&D, it fails to suffice. I’m glad it works for you in Eberron games. But whatever it is about Mabar and Irnia that makes it possible to have them mix together into a coherent set of conditions when a region is saturated in both pretty well indicates that they aren’t just evil and good.

And, frankly, this could lead to too much Iranian radiation being a bad thing, too, meaning casting too many [good] spells could be an evil act. Which is its own contradiction.

So even in Eberron, there are contradictions that arise from the assumption that there is “evil radiation” that can coexist with “ good radiation” rather than cancelling our, and still having the rules regarding casting aligned spells being aligned acts.

If you INSIST on using Eberron, please explain what a melding of Irnia and Mabar would look like. Because again, what I can pick up from the scant details you offer is that something about them is not mutually exclusive. And I cannot see how that can make any amount of Iranian energy purely a good thing.
It would look like whatever the DM decides it looks like. Eberron is designed to be flexible in the types of stories it allows you to tell.

It seems to me that most of these contradictions are arising from your assumption that good and evil energies cancel each other out like [some sort of physics or chemistry metaphor about things that cancel each other out]. As far as I'm aware, this assumption is not canon.

You're also assuming that spewing dangerous pollution into the environment is only evil if the pollution is composed of Pure Cosmic Evil™. That seems extremely questionable to me. I would argue that polluting the environment with ordinary run-of-the-mill toxic waste is also evil. (See above re: Captain Planet villains, or, for an example from D&D canon, defilers in the Dark Sun setting, as described in Dragon #315, p34.) It doesn't matter if negative energy is inherently evil—the important thing is that it's a harmful substance that will place innocents in danger if it leaks everywhere.

Silly Name

2020-09-23, 06:11 AM

While the pollution theory is interesting and can work depending on setting assumptions, thinking a bit more about this, it could very well be that creating undead is an Evil act because it's a defilement of a corpse.

As we've already discussed, your body being animated by necromantic magic prevents any form of resurrection from occurring until the zombie/skeleton is destroyed. And even if this isn't a practical problem for most, your corpse will still be shambling along with no agency of its own under the orders of the necromancer, rotting and decaying, forbidden from peaceful rest.

What's evil about this? One could say that a corpse is not a person, and they'd be right, but... It still was part of one, once. Defiling bodies is an act of disrespect, and a peaceful rest should be given to all. Once you start seeing those bodies as resources, once you deny them the dignity of the tomb, you being to err close to a lack of respect for the dignity of living beings.

Even if someone agreed to being raised as a zombie after their death, the issue remains that they have zero say in what happens to their body after that. The necromancer is free to do as they want with their new servant, who will obey any order without question.

You can disagree, of course, I don't pretend that this is an universal answer. But, D&D standard cosmology proposes that morality is objective: there are Good actions and Evil actions, and there is little space for moral relativism.

noob

2020-09-23, 06:16 AM

Segev

2020-09-23, 11:16 AM

It's not a "chemistry" thing. It's simply that good and evil are opposites. What, precisely, does "good radiation" and "evil radiation" do?

The best I've been able to come up with is "promote their alignment in the area." If good and evil are equally promoted, this would cancel out in general. Unless, I suppose, you want to suggest that you'd have extreme good and extreme evil, but that really doesn't work because that would still require locus. You can't have a Neutral person who performs extreme good and extreme evil: he's just evil who sometimes does nice things. I suppose you could argue that good just loses out to evil, but that's a bit depressing and also doesn't really fit with the notion that there's a balance in the cosmos.

That said, I still find the "radiation" explanation...lame. "You're committing evil because it's yucky. :smallyuk:" I like my evil in stories to actually be something that makes the reader or player feel a bit...uncomfortable...doing it, if they consider the world to be "real" for their SOD purposes. (Obviously, I am not judging anybody, here, over what they do in their pretendy-fun-times. Playing a villain because you know the world is just imaginary is fine. But if you're not detatching yourself from it, I don't want there to be 'clean evil' that can be performed by a PC to make him Eeheeheeheevil without there actually being something...uncomfortable...about his evil actions.)

If my necromancer is an evil man just because he's casting animate dead with abandon, but the worst thing you can say about him is that he's spreading "evil pollution," that is really unsatisfying. "He's jaywalking! If he and thousands of others do that, traffic might be slowed down!" is the level of guilt or the like that I'm getting a feel of from that, and it's grossly underwhelming. It feels a lot more like informed evil than real evil.

I don't support this proposal I'm about to make for other reasons, but an example of how to make it satisfyingly evil would be if skeletons and zombies actually trapped the soul of the victim in the body but cut off all ability to control it. That would be torturous and denying them release to their afterlives, and would be quite evil. (Even then, though, it could be mitigated by volunteers who know what they're getting into volunteering. Perhaps for a noble cause, soldiers willing to give up their lives in battle volunteer to be animated to keep up the fight, with the good-aligned necromancers agreeing to release them to their final rest after the war is over.)

I dislike this because it seems like it's too powerful for a third or fourth level spell and like its almost spending power to weaken its end effect. But it would work for the "always evil" thing...mostly. Maybe add in that it does torture them with agonizing pain they cannot express nor do anything about so that the volunteers are being tortured, making it sufficiently uncomfortable even with volunteers that good-aligned folks would still feel really bad about doing it.

It's probably overkill, too; it could be a much lesser evil and still be "always evil." But it needs to be sufficiently so that you feel that visceral guilt over doing it.

Troacctid

2020-09-23, 01:04 PM

It's not a "chemistry" thing. It's simply that good and evil are opposites. What, precisely, does "good radiation" and "evil radiation" do?

The best I've been able to come up with is "promote their alignment in the area." If good and evil are equally promoted, this would cancel out in general. Unless, I suppose, you want to suggest that you'd have extreme good and extreme evil, but that really doesn't work because that would still require locus. You can't have a Neutral person who performs extreme good and extreme evil: he's just evil who sometimes does nice things. I suppose you could argue that good just loses out to evil, but that's a bit depressing and also doesn't really fit with the notion that there's a balance in the cosmos.
One of the themes in D&D settings is that evil is more powerful than good. In the Great Wheel cosmology, celestials are vastly outnumbered by fiends, and the only reason they're able to put up a fight at all is because the demons and devils spend so many resources fighting each other. In Eberron, major good-aligned powers were deliberately written to be limited or ineffective enough that they can't swoop in and solve all the PCs' problems. Don't even get me started on Greyhawk. And generally, it's easier to destroy than to rebuild. So there's no particular reason to assume that good and evil are perfectly balanced, and in fact it makes sense to assume the opposite.

As for what effects evil pollution has, that's easy, it corrupts and defiles the land. You've seen it a million times in media. Scar was probably casting a lot of evil spells after he usurped the throne from Mufasa.

That said, I still find the "radiation" explanation...lame. "You're committing evil because it's yucky. :smallyuk:" I like my evil in stories to actually be something that makes the reader or player feel a bit...uncomfortable...doing it, if they consider the world to be "real" for their SOD purposes. (Obviously, I am not judging anybody, here, over what they do in their pretendy-fun-times. Playing a villain because you know the world is just imaginary is fine. But if you're not detatching yourself from it, I don't want there to be 'clean evil' that can be performed by a PC to make him Eeheeheeheevil without there actually being something...uncomfortable...about his evil actions.)

If my necromancer is an evil man just because he's casting animate dead with abandon, but the worst thing you can say about him is that he's spreading "evil pollution," that is really unsatisfying. "He's jaywalking! If he and thousands of others do that, traffic might be slowed down!" is the level of guilt or the like that I'm getting a feel of from that, and it's grossly underwhelming. It feels a lot more like informed evil than real evil.
That's a commonly held opinion in-universe. You wouldn't be the first to believe that it's inconsequential because it's not obviously hurting anyone directly. It shows a level of callousness that tends to preclude a good alignment.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-09-23, 01:14 PM

Houseruling animate dead and (most) other undead-creation spells so that they channel both negative energy and capital-E Evil energy and that undead are actually "always Evil" (yes, even then), and have uncontrolled, even mindless, undead be horrifically destructive, while causing pain to the soul in the afterlife (regardless of alignment) would fix this whole debacle.

Troacctid

2020-09-23, 01:26 PM

Segev

2020-09-23, 01:28 PM

As for what effects evil pollution has, that's easy, it corrupts and defiles the land. You've seen it a million times in media. Scar was probably casting a lot of evil spells after he usurped the throne from Mufasa.Okay. What does good pollution do, then? If Scar instead cast tons and tons of good-aligned spells, what would the Pride Lands have looked like?

That's a commonly held opinion in-universe. You wouldn't be the first to believe that it's inconsequential because it's not obviously hurting anyone directly. It shows a level of callousness that tends to preclude a good alignment.If it takes thousands of people all doing it with abandon, then it's not hurting anybody anyway, and casting a good spell or two to counterbalance should be just fine as a "clean-up" measure.

No, it's not callousness. It's rejection of a lame excuse. It also requires the contribution to be so small as to be unnoticeable per casting, so if you do notable good with each casting, you're already ahead of the game.

I want my acts of definite evil to actually be evil, not be "dark and edgy." "I wear dark eyeshadow and black clothes, write goth poetry, and cast animate dead," should be up there with "I wear dark eyeshadow and black clothes, write goth poetry, and beat my kid when I get angry," not on par with, "I wear dark eyeshadow and black clothes, write goth peotry, and put a spiked collar on my chihuahua."

Psyren

2020-09-23, 01:31 PM

Only if negative energy and death (no matter the cause) are inherently evil. Which they aren't.

It's true that negative energy itself isn't evil - but neither is radioactive waste, and pouring it into a lake or meadow would still be an evil act.

Per Libris Mortis, negative energy makes it easier for uncontrolled undead to enter the world that the necromancer didn't intend. There are a vast quantity of undead creatures that can arise spontaneously from various circumstances, and LM/BoVD state that unchecked necromancy can mean more of them. Nobody knows exactly what makes some executed serial killers become Mohrgs while the others simply die off for example, but in nations where necromancy is widespread, you will get more of the former. Similarly, not all neglected children become Slaymates and not everyone who dies with unfinished business becomes a Ghost, but the ones that do likely do so due to some presence of "ambient" negative energy.

Likewise, healing should be evil for tipping the balance (and summoning the Jenova expy Elder Evil). Which it isn't.

I think positive energy doesn't have a similar effect for a few reasons:

1) The universe tends towards entropy anyway - it might take trillions and trillions of years, but negative energy is very slowly winning. So while widespread necromancy can speed things up in the downward direction, the same is not true for a bunch of healing reversing that trend in the other direction.

2) The nature of the two energies is different. Negative energy feeds on, well, everything - up to and including other energies. Positive energy, specifically the variety used in healing, has inherent limits placed on it, such as (in most cases) not being able to heal someone beyond their hit point total, maximum stats, or an otherwise healthy state. Positive spells that could do damage to living creatures in this way likely exist, but they are either not well-known or not easily accessible by most casters.

Quertus

2020-09-23, 01:32 PM

Reading some of these responses, I feel like Luke: "so, the dark side is stronger?"

-----

On the one hand, dumping toxins into the rivers to kill off a village and, ultimately, potentially the whole campaign world, sounds pretty evil to me, regardless of how many "trees" one plants, and regardless of whether those trees ultimately are enough to eventually counteract that pollution. The village is still dead.

On the other hand, "Eberon makes it make perfect sense, because it says 'I said so, make it up for yourself'" is the opposite of an improvement. That just spreads the nonsense / lack of sense over *more* layers, rather than actually clarifying anything about the underlying mechanics.

-----

Side question: we have the books, so we know that Animate Dead has the [evil] tag. But is there any way for characters in the world to empirically determine this fact (not through asking others, but to actually scientifically test / observe the phenomenon?)?

Troacctid

2020-09-23, 01:45 PM

On the other hand, "Eberon makes it make perfect sense, because it says 'I said so, make it up for yourself'" is the opposite of an improvement. That just spreads the nonsense / lack of sense over *more* layers, rather than actually clarifying anything about the underlying mechanics.
Is there anything about the underlying mechanics that particularly needs to be clarified? The spell has the evil descriptor, which has clearly defined mechanical effects. The undead it creates also have an evil alignment, which has mechanical effects as well. Seems like the mechanics are all neatly locked up. The more interesting question is, what kind of story do we want to tell? Why does it matter to the plot?

Side question: we have the books, so we know that Animate Dead has the [evil] tag. But is there any way for characters in the world to empirically determine this fact (not through asking others, but to actually scientifically test / observe the phenomenon?)?
Evil spells leave behind a lingering aura that can be detected by detect evil. It doesn't give you any information as to why it's evil, just that it is evil.

Psyren

2020-09-23, 01:45 PM

Side question: we have the books, so we know that Animate Dead has the [evil] tag. But is there any way for characters in the world to empirically determine this fact (not through asking others, but to actually scientifically test / observe the phenomenon?)?

In settings that contain locales (cities or nations) where necromancy is widespread, a character could in theory compare the number or likelihood of spontaneous/uncontrolled undead in those locations to nations where necromancy is more tightly regulated or outright banned. For example, in Golarion, the nation of Geb has legal necromancy and is teeming with spontaneous undead. It's not impossible that this fact could have other root causes, but the most likely driver is the much higher incidence of "allowed" necromancy in this place and places like it.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-09-23, 02:10 PM

That's not even a houserule so much as a valid interpretation of the existing rules that's 100% consistent with the text, AFAICT.Err, no? Animate dead etc don't channel evil energy (capital-E or otherwise), skeletons don't do anything at all if uncontrolled, by RAW, zombies only do what their masters tell them to, and such effects don't cause damage or pain to the soul.

That's why I said they're houserules.

Troacctid

2020-09-23, 02:22 PM

Err, no? Animate dead etc don't channel evil energy (capital-E or otherwise), skeletons don't do anything at all if uncontrolled, by RAW, zombies only do what their masters tell them to, and such effects don't cause damage or pain to the soul.

That's why I said they're houserules.
That's also a valid reading of the rules.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-09-23, 02:44 PM

That's also a valid reading of the rules.If you mean, "that's what the rules say, and the others are houserules," yeah.

Silly Name

2020-09-23, 02:51 PM

Okay. What does good pollution do, then? If Scar instead cast tons and tons of good-aligned spells, what would the Pride Lands have looked like?

Why does good "pollution" need to exist? Why should it be as strong as the lingering effects of Evil?

But if it were to exist, I assume it would make things brighter, healthier, more peaceful. If we subscribe to the idea that too much Good is bad (which I've always found profoundly dumb), it may turn the area too lively, too bountiful and its inhabitants too passive, leading to an overpopulated region easily taken over.

If it takes thousands of people all doing it with abandon, then it's not hurting anybody anyway, and casting a good spell or two to counterbalance should be just fine as a "clean-up" measure.

Sure... the same way that throwing a single cigarette or plastic cup in a river won't upset the ecosystem. And everyone who throws cups and cigarettes in the river thinks "meh, just one won't hurt anybody", until the river is full of waste and all the fish are dead or poisoned. If Evil spells indeed create pollution, and it works this way, every little Evil spell contributes to creating a worse environment.

Psyren

2020-09-23, 02:52 PM

If you mean, "that's what the rules say, and the others are houserules," yeah.

Unless you're speaking exclusively lojban, ambiguity and interpretation is a part of language, and rules are based on language.

For example, saying "animate dead doesn't channel [evil] energy" is not definite, because it clearly has the [evil] descriptor, so it depends on your definition of "channel", which the game rules do a poor job of defining. And hostile skeletons/zombies are found uncontrolled in official modules and even encounter tables all the time.

Segev

2020-09-23, 02:57 PM

Why does good "pollution" need to exist? Why should it be as strong as the lingering effects of Evil?Why does "evil pollution" need to exist? Why should it be as strong as the lingering effects of Good?

We have [good] spells whose very casting is a good act, so if the explanation for [evil] spells being inherently evil is "evil pollution," why would the explanation for [good] spells being inherently good be any different?

But if it were to exist, I assume it would make things brighter, healthier, more peaceful. If we subscribe to the idea that too much Good is bad (which I've always found profoundly dumb), it may turn the area too lively, too bountiful and its inhabitants too passive, leading to an overpopulated region easily taken over.Alright, so if you have good pollution making an area brighter, healthier, and more peaceful, and evil pollution making an area darker, blighted, and more violent, it would seem that having both would make the area both brighter and darker, healthier and more blighted, and more peaceful and more violent. This would, in fact, cancel out.

Troacctid

2020-09-23, 03:03 PM

Why does "evil pollution" need to exist? Why should it be as strong as the lingering effects of Good?

We have [good] spells whose very casting is a good act, so if the explanation for [evil] spells being inherently evil is "evil pollution," why would the explanation for [good] spells being inherently good be any different?
I don't understand? I feel like you were complaining before about the rules being inconsistent? But it seems like the only reason they're inconsistent is because you're insisting on assumptions like these that make them inconsistent? And they would work totally fine if you relaxed those assumptions, which, as far as I can tell, aren't based on anything in the text? :smallconfused:

Segev

2020-09-23, 03:11 PM

I don't understand? I feel like you were complaining before about the rules being inconsistent? But it seems like the only reason they're inconsistent is because you're insisting on assumptions like these that make them inconsistent? And they would work totally fine if you relaxed those assumptions, which, as far as I can tell, aren't based on anything in the text? :smallconfused:

I'm insisting that the whole pollution concept is either inconsistent or lame, if not both. If it's lame but not inconsistent, it's easily mitigated by doing some generic good that counteracts potential evil that might one day maybe arise from it, or casting a [good] spell to counterbalance it. Which kind-of makes it lame, anyway.

I've given examples of what would be satisfyingly unavoidable evil, in contrast to the silly "evil pollution" idea. I'm not happy with them for other reasons, but they at least point in the direction I think a solution has to lie.

Psyren

2020-09-23, 03:25 PM

We have [good] spells whose very casting is a good act, so if the explanation for [evil] spells being inherently evil is "evil pollution," why would the explanation for [good] spells being inherently good be any different?

The issue here is that casting good spells can't change your alignment by themselves (BoED pg. 7) while the opposite is true for evil spells (BoVD, FC2) so the "cancel out" argument doesn't work. Yes, it's a double-standard, but that's how it works in the D&D game.

I'm insisting that the whole pollution concept is either inconsistent or lame, if not both.

Of course it's inconsistent - doing good being harder than doing evil is a common trope in fiction. "There wouldn't need to be paladins if the world was fair," etc.

Unavenger

2020-09-23, 03:46 PM

Also, "Good is harder than evil" isn't even an unreasonable point. It would take years to build something that I can destroy in minutes, decades to nurture a person who I could kill in seconds, millenia to build a society that an army can tear down in a few days, and aeons to build up a world that we are destroying in decades and can potentially annihilate in two hours flat. Of course it is easier to do evil than it is to do good.

My main gripe with the "Cosmological balance tilts" or "Pollution" or whatever arguments isn't that, and it's not that they're never actually represented mechanically and therefore it's hard to argue that they're actually relevant anyway. No, my main problem with them is that they're platitudinous coverups for a system that glorifies disproportionate posthumous retribution and stipulates a variety of moral tenets that now make even WotC themselves, who wrote the damn things, recoil in disgust.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-09-23, 03:57 PM

Unless you're speaking exclusively lojban, ambiguity and interpretation is a part of language, and rules are based on language.

For example, saying "animate dead doesn't channel [evil] energy" is not definite, because it clearly has the [evil] descriptor, so it depends on your definition of "channel", which the game rules do a poor job of defining. And hostile skeletons/zombies are found uncontrolled in official modules and even encounter tables all the time.Well, "it doesn't say it isn't" isn't really much of an argument for a positive rule identification, and who's to say that the "uncontrolled" undead aren't carrying out their last orders?

As the rules stand, skeletons and zombies only do stuff they're told to do, and nothing else. Any module designers that state otherwise are actively breaking the rules or enforcing houserules on the module (like the dumb rules enforced in The World's Largest Dungeon).

icefractal

2020-09-23, 04:00 PM

If I was going with "undead are are a bad thing" - which is a legitimate setting element I feel like, because the alternative is "undeath provides infinite energy and immortality, anyone who's not utilizing it is a fool" - then I would go with pollution, but not "evil pollution" - negative energy pollution.

Let's start with the fact that undead provide infinite energy. A skeleton can walk on a treadmill forever, not requiring any food. Or with supervision, farm forever, mine forever, etc. So where's that energy coming from?

Well, the answer could be - from the other side of the positive/negative energy pool, running the pump in reverse. The effect? Living creatures die younger. A single zombie only makes a small change when spread out across the whole world, but it adds up, and stronger undead like Liches consume more. It's not the creating them that does it, it's their continued existence. And it's not something you can balance with a counter-factor because the current situation (of humans living to 2d20+70) is based on things being overwhelmingly tilted to the living (as most settings are). An actual balance would have people dying of old age at 30 or the like.

So picture a necromancer and his skeleton entourage as a guy driving around in a convoy of "coal rolling" trucks and you can see why he'd be disliked.

Incidentally, this also explains why anyone would care about purging the undead from some forgotten tomb that nobody even visits - their mere existence there is like a burning oil well.

With that premise, the most ethical form of reanimation is short-duration and small in numbers. Animate a zombie hydra to save the city from an invading army (and then destroy it afterwards)? It's not without cost, but many people would say it was worth it. An entire skeleton work force? You're ****ting up the world for your own benefit.

noob

2020-09-23, 04:02 PM

If I was going with "undead are are a bad thing" - which is a legitimate setting element I feel like, because the alternative is "undeath provides infinite energy and immortality, anyone who's not utilizing it is a fool" - then I would go with pollution, but not "evil pollution" - negative energy pollution.

Let's start with the fact that undead provide infinite energy. A skeleton can walk on a treadmill forever, not requiring any food. Or with supervision, farm forever, mine forever, etc. So where's that energy coming from?

Well, the answer could be - from the other side of the positive/negative energy pool, running the pump in reverse. The effect? Living creatures die younger. A single zombie only makes a small change when spread out across the whole world, but it adds up, and stronger undead like Liches consume more. It's not the creating them that does it, it's their continued existence. And it's not something you can balance with a counter-factor because the current situation (of humans living to 2d20+70) is based on things being overwhelmingly tilted to the living (as most settings are). An actual balance would have people dying of old age at 30 or the like.

So picture a necromancer and his skeleton entourage as a guy driving around in a convoy of "coal rolling" trucks and you can see why he'd be disliked.

Incidentally, this also explains why anyone would care about purging the undead from some forgotten tomb that nobody even visits - their mere existence there is like a burning oil well.

With that premise, the most ethical form of reanimation is short-duration and small in numbers. Animate a zombie hydra to save the city from an invading army? It's not without cost, but many people would say it was worth it. An entire skeleton work force? You're ****ting up the world for your own benefit.
Make enough undyings to compensate for the negative energy by bringing back positive energy?

icefractal

2020-09-23, 04:07 PM

If Deathless exist in the setting, they'd just be like living creatures I guess, which are also positive-energy powered. Honestly there's no point saying "undeath is bad" if there's an easy work-around for the badness.

If you're going for that, just say "undead actually aren't bad, people use them frequently, and maybe some civilizations are necro-transhuman utopias". Which is also a legitimate way to design a setting; it's just a preference thing.

Troacctid

2020-09-23, 04:09 PM

Well, "it doesn't say it isn't" isn't really much of an argument for a positive rule identification, and who's to say that the "uncontrolled" undead aren't carrying out their last orders?
But the argument was that it's open to interpretation, and there are multiple valid readings. So..."it doesn't say" is kind of the point of that argument, right?

As the rules stand, skeletons and zombies only do stuff they're told to do, and nothing else. Any module designers that state otherwise are actively breaking the rules or enforcing houserules on the module (like the dumb rules enforced in The World's Largest Dungeon).
Libris Mortis does say that zombies default to attacking the closest living creature if given no other orders.

Psyren

2020-09-23, 04:15 PM

Well, "it doesn't say it isn't" isn't really much of an argument for a positive rule identification,

The [evil] descriptor is enough evidence that it is, therefore the burden of proof that it isn't is actually on you.

and who's to say that the "uncontrolled" undead aren't carrying out their last orders?

Putting aside that every last one of them being that way strains credulity, Libris Mortis explicitly says this is false - that "wild" mindless undead are in fact possible in Dungeons & Dragons.

As the rules stand, skeletons and zombies only do stuff they're told to do, and nothing else. Any module designers that state otherwise are actively breaking the rules or enforcing houserules on the module (like the dumb rules enforced in The World's Largest Dungeon).

Zombies don't actually have the clause you're referring to, and as for skeletons - if you want to be that much of a stickler for RAW, that same page says Skeletons "obey the orders of their evil masters", so you still can't make them and not be evil by RAW, making this entire side discussion moot.

noob

2020-09-23, 04:23 PM

Zombies don't actually have the clause you're referring to, and as for skeletons - if you want to be that much of a stickler for RAW, that same page says Skeletons "obey the orders of their evil masters", so you still can't make them and not be evil by RAW, making this entire side discussion moot.
Step 1: make skeletons.
Step 2: get an evil person to be their master.
Step 3: mind control the evil person since mind control is not evil for some mysterious reasons.
Five hundred wrongs makes a right just after a mind rape or something?

Blazeteck

2020-09-23, 04:27 PM

I think whether or not its evil is going to depend entirely on social constructs and divine decree in your settings. The cultures may see it as desscration as it was once someones loved one and theres usually a social stigma attached to messing with the dead body of someone. How would you feel if someone up and dug up your dead grandpa and so he could use it for something? Theres also the possibility that the gods themselves deem it as an evil act. If all the good gods on the setting say its evil well its gonna be hard to go against that.

As far as the creatures always being evil you can look at it from the perspective of undead usually being a an enemy when put into media, Ive rarely seen anything that tries to depict undead as anything other than a monster that will try to kill you, or you could try to look at it from a diving into the lore perspective. Is it just uncontrolled undead that are evil because usually an uncontrolled undead will try to attack creatures whereas a controlled one will do as its ordered. Whens the last time you can remember a DM putting uncontrolled undead in a game and not having them attack the party when interacted with? Ive never had someone throw uncontrolled undead into a game simply to have them do absolutely nothing or on the other hand try to do an act of good or kindness.

noob

2020-09-23, 04:29 PM

Segev

2020-09-23, 04:39 PM

The issue here is that casting good spells can't change your alignment by themselves (BoED pg. 7) while the opposite is true for evil spells (BoVD, FC2) so the "cancel out" argument doesn't work. Yes, it's a double-standard, but that's how it works in the D&D game.Wait, really? :smallconfused::smallannoyed:

That's lame. I don't care if anybody disagrees with me on this, that's my opinion and there's no objective truth I or anybody else can point to to support or deny it. But in my opinion, that's just lame.

Bleh. Maybe it's better to just house rule animate dead as not inherently evil, then. I lose potentially-interesting fluff that I might one day come up with, but it's better than it being obnoxiously lame (again, opinion).

Of course it's inconsistent - doing good being harder than doing evil is a common trope in fiction. "There wouldn't need to be paladins if the world was fair," etc.
It negates the very notion of "good" spells, though.

Meh. It was poorly thought-out, and my efforts to make it satisfactory have failed. I give up.

Troacctid

2020-09-23, 05:00 PM

Ghostwalk.
A portion of the afterlife based stories have dead people come back to earth (so they are undead: dead but still among the living) and usually have them behave like people.
Now creating undead with a magical ritual from corpses to make them serve their creator is nearly always done by super evil people in fiction.
Ghostwalk changed ghosts to not be undead.

Phhase

2020-09-23, 08:08 PM

Eh, mostly it boils down to the creator's views (both literal and spiritual) of "Ew gross dead bodies icky" which I hold in contempt. The question of consent to use of the body is more pertinent, but since speak with dead is a thing, I think the issue is easily taken care of.

On topic of Atropus, I thought that he was beckoned not by negative energy, but by death on a massive scale? I think the sample adventure in Elder Evils has him summoned via the villain casting a spell that calls down a meteor, killing tons of people? I mean, Atropus is obviously an avatar and nexus of negative energy, and spreads undeath in his wake, but I don't think it's a part of summoning him.

It rubs me the wrong way that an elemental force of the universe no different from fire or water is somehow involved in questions of morality. While I do enjoy classic fantasy romps, I prefer the power reveals narrative to the power corrupts one, especially since the former can often be indistinguishable from the latter. Sometimes, it gets tired, and archetype becomes stereotype. Besides, we already effectively have "Evil" elementals in demons and devils. I strongly prefer undead the way Redcloak puts it: skin and bones glued together with some dark energy, little more than puppets or robots.

It's especially perplexing because necromancy in 3.5 was explicitly "magic that manipulates life and death", and thus, healing spells were classified as necromancy, completely logical. But in keeping with the "ew gross necromancy" theme, 5e moved healing to evocation for some reason. Except, they also made Positive Energy capable of inflicting radiant damage to anything, which makes no sense! They way it worked in 3.5 where it was healing only unless diametrically opposed by negative energy was far more in keeping with the "gross necromany" narrative! Whatever, I'm just ranting about nothing, disregard.

Here's an idea: a Day of the Dead inspired circus caravan where performers are animated as skeletons after their passing, so they can continue to entertain. That sounds like tons of fun!

Blackhawk748

2020-09-23, 08:19 PM

icefractal

2020-09-23, 08:59 PM

It rubs me the wrong way that an elemental force of the universe no different from fire or water is somehow involved in questions of morality. While I do enjoy classic fantasy romps, I prefer the power reveals narrative to the power corrupts one, especially since the former can often be indistinguishable from the latter. Sometimes, it gets tired, and archetype becomes stereotype. Besides, we already effectively have "Evil" elementals in demons and devils. I strongly prefer undead the way Redcloak puts it: skin and bones glued together with some dark energy, little more than puppets or robots.I think that can be a very interesting setting, but it does change things considerably if you consider the implications.

Undead don't need food or really any other resources. A city with a population of 2000 living people can easily have 20k undead residents underneath it (most of the problems living underground disappear when you don't need light or air and most cave-ins are only an inconvenience). And why wouldn't they? It's immortality, and while the cost to be (for example) a Necropolitan is somewhat high, it shouldn't be that hard to get a loan when you're going to become a perfect worker with eternity to pay it off. The benefits for the society are large, although the living may find themselves patronized (they're important because undead can't have children, but maybe not allowed into dangerous lines of work, and with 50 years of experience you're still an "apprentice", because the guildmasters have centuries of it and no desire to step down).

So really, most "stable" cities should have a population that's 90% or more undead, with the living considered as basically teenagers until they 'mature' to post-mortal. And the ones that don't are at a serious disadvantage.

To an extent this is just the same situation as the Tippyverse, but this one doesn't even require high-level casters to exist and be helpful. The ritual for Necropolitans is somewhat vague but doesn't seem to require anything more advanced than "zombie servitors" to do the chanting, and some forms are even easier.

Lol, maybe undeath is actually evil because it tends to create massive inequality with an immortal 1% that's also high-level than you.

illyahr

2020-09-23, 09:15 PM

I think that can be a very interesting setting, but it does change things considerably if you consider the implications.

Undead don't need food or really any other resources. A city with a population of 2000 living people can easily have 20k undead residents underneath it (most of the problems living underground disappear when you don't need light or air and most cave-ins are only an inconvenience). And why wouldn't they? It's immortality, and while the cost to be (for example) a Necropolitan is somewhat high, it shouldn't be that hard to get a loan when you're going to become a perfect worker with eternity to pay it off. The benefits for the society are large, although the living may find themselves patronized (they're important because undead can't have children, but maybe not allowed into dangerous lines of work, and with 50 years of experience you're still an "apprentice", because the guildmasters have centuries of it and no desire to step down).

So really, most "stable" cities should have a population that's 90% or more undead, with the living considered as basically teenagers until they 'mature' to post-mortal. And the ones that don't are at a serious disadvantage.

To an extent this is just the same situation as the Tippyverse, but this one doesn't even require high-level casters to exist and be helpful. The ritual for Necropolitans is somewhat vague but doesn't seem to require anything more advanced than "zombie servitors" to do the chanting, and some forms are even easier.

Lol, maybe undeath is actually evil because it tends to create massive inequality with an immortal 1% that's also high-level than you.

What this scenario isn't considering is the 1-3 children, 6-12, grandchildren, etc that the person is not making because they no longer have the ability to reproduce. A society of undead, even if you wait for teenagers to properly mature, would stop growing in short order as none of the citizens would be having children. You would have to keep a stock of living citizens as breeding stock. Even then, the population would be so weighted toward the needs of the undead that maintaining the few living residents would become more costly than would be sustainable. It just wouldn't be cost-effective.

Mechalich

2020-09-23, 09:24 PM

I think that can be a very interesting setting, but it does change things considerably if you consider the implications.

Undead don't need food or really any other resources. A city with a population of 2000 living people can easily have 20k undead residents underneath it (most of the problems living underground disappear when you don't need light or air and most cave-ins are only an inconvenience). And why wouldn't they? It's immortality, and while the cost to be (for example) a Necropolitan is somewhat high, it shouldn't be that hard to get a loan when you're going to become a perfect worker with eternity to pay it off. The benefits for the society are large, although the living may find themselves patronized (they're important because undead can't have children, but maybe not allowed into dangerous lines of work, and with 50 years of experience you're still an "apprentice", because the guildmasters have centuries of it and no desire to step down).

So really, most "stable" cities should have a population that's 90% or more undead, with the living considered as basically teenagers until they 'mature' to post-mortal. And the ones that don't are at a serious disadvantage.

To an extent this is just the same situation as the Tippyverse, but this one doesn't even require high-level casters to exist and be helpful. The ritual for Necropolitans is somewhat vague but doesn't seem to require anything more advanced than "zombie servitors" to do the chanting, and some forms are even easier.

Lol, maybe undeath is actually evil because it tends to create massive inequality with an immortal 1% that's also high-level than you.

This actually does illuminate a major out-of-universe reason for the 'evil' attachment to animate dead. If mindless undead are simply fleshy or bony robots then you've created a necropunk world. The evil tag is a handwave that allows a GM to forbid their otherwise standard high fantasy from going the necropunk route 'because that would be bad' for reasons that it is considered unnecessary to justify.

icefractal

2020-09-23, 09:59 PM

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-23, 10:11 PM

What this scenario isn't considering is the 1-3 children, 6-12, grandchildren, etc that the person is not making because they no longer have the ability to reproduce. A society of undead, even if you wait for teenagers to properly mature, would stop growing in short order as none of the citizens would be having children. You would have to keep a stock of living citizens as breeding stock. Even then, the population would be so weighted toward the needs of the undead that maintaining the few living residents would become more costly than would be sustainable. It just wouldn't be cost-effective.

I don't think he meant literal teenagers. And the needs of the undead are really a lot lower than they are for the living. Historically, the vast majority of labor went into agriculture, which undead do not need at all. Undead also don't need to sleep, so they are dramatically more efficient than the living. Mindless undead (who I think would probably be the majority) don't even have demands at all in the economic (or any other) sense, and will simply do whatever you tell them to do until they do something else. I would expect undead societies to have an enormous surplus of basically everything. Their main resource constraint is probably managing the ratio of vampires to the living so that people don't die of blood loss and vampire don't starve.

This actually does illuminate a major out-of-universe reason for the 'evil' attachment to animate dead. If mindless undead are simply fleshy or bony robots then you've created a necropunk world. The evil tag is a handwave that allows a GM to forbid their otherwise standard high fantasy from going the necropunk route 'because that would be bad' for reasons that it is considered unnecessary to justify.

Except it doesn't fix that problem. If necromancy is Evil, that's fine. Because there are supposed to be Evil cultures that run around doing Evil. If the Elves, Dwarves, and Humans of the world forswear undead armies because they're gross, that doesn't magically stop the Goblins or Orcs from raising undead armies of their own. And since undead are basically better than comparable living troops (what with not needing food or rest, and not breaking due to morale), what that likely means is that the forces of Evil have conquered the world under their necro-empires. If you don't want a necro-punk setting, just declare that you don't have a necro-punk setting. The game doesn't need to or benefit from screwing over PC necromancers to make that happen.

SangoProduction

2020-09-24, 03:36 AM

Ghostwalk changed ghosts to not be undead.

Wait. What are they then?

noob

2020-09-24, 03:48 AM

Wait. What are they then?
joke/
life impeded.
it is a synonym for undead but the devs refuse to acknowledge that./joke
because it is not because you give a different type to a creature that came back from the dead under a form that is not living that it stops being undead.

Silly Name

2020-09-24, 04:36 AM

So how does this work when I raise a long dead Tiger? It's not a person, it doesn't have a soul (at least I'm pretty certain animals don't have souls in DnD cosmology) and it's never going to get raised. On top of that, I'm not "defiling a corpse" because that has cultural connotations and Tigers don't have cultures.

So why is it Evil to do that?

I'm actually not sure about a complete lack of soul (some CG planes are sort-of a perfect wilderness afterlife, and in my games I've always ruled animals can be resurrected), but it's still Evil to mistreat animals and things that aren't as sapient/sentient as humans. They're still living beings and therefore are due some baseline amount of dignity - remember, Good doesn't champion respect for humanoids, it champions respect for all living beings.

And yes, most animals don't have cultural hang-ups about burial. But, again, in D&D morality is an absolute thing because Good and Evil are almost tangible, we have spells and magic items that can identify them with no error.

So if the rule is "creating undead is Evil because defilement of a corpse is always Evil, and the act of rising undead is always defilement as it interferes with the natural cycle and harms the soul in some way", then that applies to all corpses regardless of race or species.

I also want to insist that undead apparently mess up with souls even if creating a zombie doesn't trap the soul of the body's original owner. My theory is that it prevents resurrection and creates a sense of anguish and dread in the soul, causing pain to them in the afterlife until the undead is destroyed.

This also sort of addresses the point of "but what if I willingly give up my body for necromancy?" The necromancer is still causing you hurt even if you agreed to it. The fact a brave hero sacrifices themselves to let innocents escape does so willingly doesn't make the villain's murder of the hero any less evil just because the hero was willing to die at their hands.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-24, 10:47 AM

But, again, in D&D morality is an absolute thing because Good and Evil are almost tangible, we have spells and magic items that can identify them with no error.

That's not what that means. It just means there are factions in D&D that are called "Good" and "Evil". Utilitarianism or Deontology or Virtue Ethics aren't somehow false in D&Dland because there's a spell that has different opinions from them. That doesn't make any sense. D&D alignment doesn't even map particularly well to real-world morality. Apparently it's morally not okay to steal power from the god of murder as an Ur-Priest, but totally fine to mentally enslave someone or boil their blood in their veins?

Basically, D&D alignment exists to provide a fig leaf for why dungeon crawling is okay. Asking it to do anything more than that, or getting into the metaphysical weeds of objective morality, causes more problems than it solves. If necromancy lets you provide a higher standard of living for your people while having them do less work, it's good by the standards players will actually apply.

Quertus

2020-09-24, 12:34 PM

Well, the answer could be - from the other side of the positive/negative energy pool, running the pump in reverse. The effect? Living creatures die younger. A single zombie only makes a small change when spread out across the whole world, but it adds up, and stronger undead like Liches consume more. It's not the creating them that does it, it's their continued existence. And it's not something you can balance with a counter-factor because the current situation (of humans living to 2d20+70) is based on things being overwhelmingly tilted to the living (as most settings are). An actual balance would have people dying of old age at 30 or the like.

So picture a necromancer and his skeleton entourage as a guy driving around in a convoy of "coal rolling" trucks and you can see why he'd be disliked.

Incidentally, this also explains why anyone would care about purging the undead from some forgotten tomb that nobody even visits - their mere existence there is like a burning oil well.

With that premise, the most ethical form of reanimation is short-duration and small in numbers. Animate a zombie hydra to save the city from an invading army (and then destroy it afterwards)? It's not without cost, but many people would say it was worth it. An entire skeleton work force? You're ****ting up the world for your own benefit.

So now I'm picturing a twisted setting where undead-hating Druids *know* that they're not "servants of the balance"; they're intentionally making the world unbalanced to give the living unnaturally long lifespans, make flowers bloom brighter, etc.

Will the party right their wrongs, at the cost of returning/condemning humanity to a much more limited lifespan, or will they contribute the cover-up of "the balance" for their own benefit and continue the racist eradication of the "alternately ambulatory"?

Psyren

2020-09-24, 12:46 PM

Step 1: make skeletons.
Step 2: get an evil person to be their master.
Step 3: mind control the evil person since mind control is not evil for some mysterious reasons.
Five hundred wrongs makes a right just after a mind rape or something?

Depending on how the entry defines "master", that's arguably you again with extra steps. As with many other D&D definitions, it's not cut and dry. I'd also question whether long term control of a sapient being and allowing his undead minions to persist would leave your alignment unchanged in perpetuity.

Wait, really? :smallconfused::smallannoyed:

That's lame. I don't care if anybody disagrees with me on this, that's my opinion and there's no objective truth I or anybody else can point to to support or deny it. But in my opinion, that's just lame.

Bleh. Maybe it's better to just house rule animate dead as not inherently evil, then. I lose potentially-interesting fluff that I might one day come up with, but it's better than it being obnoxiously lame (again, opinion).

It negates the very notion of "good" spells, though.

Meh. It was poorly thought-out, and my efforts to make it satisfactory have failed. I give up.

Remember that D&D rules only present the status quo and the underpinnings thereof. Your character's goal in their campaign could be to discover an ethical or "pollution-free" form of necromancy, including researching a custom reanimation spell that lacks any of the tags and produces neutral undead, and they may even succeed. Or they could rewrite the cosmology such that undead are stable magical creations like constructs instead of having a constant link to the NEP, solving spontaneous undead forever. You could even solve the issue of good spells not changing alignment. Just because a status quo exists doesnt mean it cant be changed or destroyed over the course of a campaign after all, and I think a post-industrial undead-fueled economy is a valid endpoint for any number of adventuring stories.

Segev

2020-09-24, 02:32 PM

Remember that D&D rules only present the status quo and the underpinnings thereof. Your character's goal in their campaign could be to discover an ethical or "pollution-free" form of necromancy, including researching a custom reanimation spell that lacks any of the tags and produces neutral undead, and they may even succeed. Or they could rewrite the cosmology such that undead are stable magical creations like constructs instead of having a constant link to the NEP, solving spontaneous undead forever. You could even solve the issue of good spells not changing alignment. Just because a status quo exists doesnt mean it cant be changed or destroyed over the course of a campaign after all, and I think a post-industrial undead-fueled economy is a valid endpoint for any number of adventuring stories.

To the contrary, I like my evil necromancer concept. I want his evil to actually be evil, though, even when done through supreme callousness. I'm not bothered by animate dead being evil. I'm bothered by it being evil with a lame, "Mweeheeheehee I'm so edgy" sort of 'safe' evil.

I'm annoyed by it being evil-by-jersey-only.

Jay R

2020-09-24, 02:41 PM

Getting back to the original question, creating undead is considered evil because it fits the general definition of desecrating corpses of most societies throughout history.

Because zombies, animated skeletons, ghouls, wraiths, vampires, etc. have been considered evil in most legends and stories about them for centuries -- possibly millennia.

This one was not a D&D invention. Having the dead walk while still dead (not resurrected, for instance) is pretty much considered evil.

There are very few stories about Count Dracula the Philanthropist, about the Zombie economic boom, or about the Egyptian mummy that comes out of the tomb to feed the poor.

And those few that exist are generally considered to be subverting expectations.

Phhase

2020-09-24, 03:22 PM

I think that can be a very interesting setting, but it does change things considerably if you consider the implications.

Undead don't need food or really any other resources. A city with a population of 2000 living people can easily have 20k undead residents underneath it (most of the problems living underground disappear when you don't need light or air and most cave-ins are only an inconvenience). And why wouldn't they? It's immortality, and while the cost to be (for example) a Necropolitan is somewhat high, it shouldn't be that hard to get a loan when you're going to become a perfect worker with eternity to pay it off. The benefits for the society are large, although the living may find themselves patronized (they're important because undead can't have children, but maybe not allowed into dangerous lines of work, and with 50 years of experience you're still an "apprentice", because the guildmasters have centuries of it and no desire to step down).

So really, most "stable" cities should have a population that's 90% or more undead, with the living considered as basically teenagers until they 'mature' to post-mortal. And the ones that don't are at a serious disadvantage.

To an extent this is just the same situation as the Tippyverse, but this one doesn't even require high-level casters to exist and be helpful. The ritual for Necropolitans is somewhat vague but doesn't seem to require anything more advanced than "zombie servitors" to do the chanting, and some forms are even easier.

Lol, maybe undeath is actually evil because it tends to create massive inequality with an immortal 1% that's also high-level than you.

Right, yeah, BUT what I'm getting at is that you don't need explicit mechanical validation in order for there to be an in-universe stigma for undeath as gross and evil. In a medievel-ish magical setting, it does make sense for most places. Dead stuff come back is understandably unsettling at first contact. I think that sort of "logical conclusion scenario" is something that would be more fun as a possible option for the players to create down the line if it occurs to them, rather than an obvious starting point.

Psyren

2020-09-24, 04:24 PM

To the contrary, I like my evil necromancer concept. I want his evil to actually be evil, though, even when done through supreme callousness. I'm not bothered by animate dead being evil. I'm bothered by it being evil with a lame, "Mweeheeheehee I'm so edgy" sort of 'safe' evil.

I'm annoyed by it being evil-by-jersey-only.

I guess I'm confused then - because not only does the above have nothing at all to do with the info I provided ([good] spells not making you good), WotC did provide a concrete if broad reason why animating undead makes you evil, or at least callous :smallconfused: so I don't see how that can be interpreted as "jersey-only."

Right, yeah, BUT what I'm getting at is that you don't need explicit mechanical validation in order for there to be an in-universe stigma for undeath as gross and evil. In a medievel-ish magical setting, it does make sense for most places. Dead stuff come back is understandably unsettling at first contact. I think that sort of "logical conclusion scenario" is something that would be more fun as a possible option for the players to create down the line if it occurs to them, rather than an obvious starting point.

I think it's worth asking the question though, because there's lots of magic that is unsettling without automatically being evil. There are spells that usurp your free will like Dominate or Enslave, spells that outright destroy your sapience like Baleful Polymorph and Feeblemind, and spells that can force you to turn on your friends and family like Friend to Foe or Insanity. So I think that going the extra mile to explain why making undead gets the [evil] tag while these sorts of spells don't is a worthwhile endeavor for a book like LM.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-24, 05:18 PM

Getting back to the original question, creating undead is considered evil because it fits the general definition of desecrating corpses of most societies throughout history.

But you don't have to desecrate corpses to do necromancy. You could just cast Animate Dead on a bunch of horse or cow skeletons, getting you a plow team that never tires. People used animal bone tools for stuff, so it's hard to see how animal skeletons wouldn't be okay if necromancy actually did work. Moreover, this standard starts getting really uncomfortable really quickly (most societies throughout history had something that we would describe as slaves).

Having the dead walk while still dead (not resurrected, for instance) is pretty much considered evil.

The waking dead are evil because they do evil stuff. Dracula is evil because he drinks people's blood and does other evil stuff, not because he's supposed to be dead and isn't.

JusticeZero

2020-09-24, 05:49 PM

Some settings it isn't. But it depends on how it works in setting.

My game, some entities who trade in souls recently gave a character some knives, requesting he use them to do coup-de-grace on sentient enemies with.
Used in that way, the knives start to glow after a kill, and are to be returned then. The fluff specifies that victims cannot be raised, reincarnated... or Animated, or transformed into undead... unless the knife is destroyed. In other words, animating a skeleton requires the owner of the body's soul to be imprisoned inside.
This is not dissimilar to RAW, where you cannot bring someone back to life if part of their body, even part you aren't using for the spell, is being used to animate an undead creature, even so minor as a mindless skeleton.
That fluff makes undead usually a lot worse.

Bohandas

2020-09-24, 06:27 PM

I feel that necromancy being evil is best explained in light of Good and Evil being objective concrete forces in the D&D multiverse. In this context, the creation of undead being evil can be understood as an arbitrary physical reaction. Like why do radioacfive elements decay? There's a material cause but there's not a reason.

ShurikVch

2020-09-24, 08:05 PM

Some notions:

Animate Dead is [Evil], but creation of Blood Golem (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=fr/pg20020731x) is non-aligned?
Really?
30 gallons of blood? (Not from a Dragon or Outsider) Must be a heck of donation...

Not just animating, but even summoning Zombies is [Evil] - despite you're neither creating something new, nor even summoning it for particularly long time (1 round/level)
Meanwhile, summoning a Flesh Golem is (again!) non-aligned - despite it being made of, essentially, the same materials as a Zombie, animated with the very same spell as a Zombie, equipped with imprisoned tortured Elemental, and (unlike a Zombie!) may go on rampage at the drop of hat...

Now, there was said a lot about the alleged Evil/Negative "pollution"...
Wait a minute...
Where, exactly, we animating our hypothetical Zombie?
Because I don't see clause about Animate Dead stopping being [Evil], if cast on the Negative Energy Plane, or in the Abyss...

The Sticks and Stones spell isn't [Evil], despite it can create Wights (and not even "Wights at the next sunset", but "Wights in 1d4 rounds")

Consecrate Spell and Purify Spell [metamagic] add [Good] descriptor to a spell.
Thus, Consecrated Purified Animate Dead causing more Good than Evil... :smallamused:

Dirgesinger PrC (Libris Mortis): Song of Awakening - which creates actual Undead (even if just for a short time) isn't labeled as [Evil] - unlike the Song of Bolstering "... bolster undead creatures against turning, much as an evil cleric does"

White Arcanist PrC in Ravenloft (Heroes of Light) is not just non-Evil, but must be Virtuous (it's one of requirements). Meanwhile, this PrC not just a Necromancy specialist, but at capstone becomes Undead - Ghost...

It's especially perplexing because necromancy in 3.5 was explicitly "magic that manipulates life and death", and thus, healing spells were classified as necromancy, completely logical. But in keeping with the "ew gross necromancy" theme, 5e moved healing to evocation for some reason. Except, they also made Positive Energy capable of inflicting radiant damage to anything, which makes no sense! They way it worked in 3.5 where it was healing only unless diametrically opposed by negative energy was far more in keeping with the "gross necromany" narrative! Whatever, I'm just ranting about nothing, disregard.
Correction: healing in 3.5 is mostly Conjuration (healing);
Necromancy, usually, heals something only if it's draining health from somebody else (although Death Pact restores you from the death - and not as Undead)
Healing was Necromancy in 2E AD&D

That's like asking if global warming is real, why are there still blizzards?
Attempt to disproving absence of something by proving presence of something completely different is a red herring (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring).

Karrnathi undead exist precisely because Karrnath already contained Mabaran manifest zones (or "undead wastelands") that allowed for experimentation with more advanced forms of necromancy. As for the undead troops themselves, for most of the Last War, they fought primarily on the borders or in other nations, so it's not like they were all concentrated in Karrnath. It was only relatively recently that all undead troops were recalled back to Karrnath's borders.
So, let's see - known Mabar manifest zones are:
Aundaire - Floating Towers of Arcanix (maybe-manmade manifest zones, tied to any plane except Dal Quor)
Breland - Faded Forest
Corvagura region of Riedra - Shanjueed Jungle
Eldeen Reaches - The Gloaming
Sarlona - Wild Zones (especially strong manifest zones for unspecified planes - with actual planar traits, and Outsiders there aren't considered extraplanar, and can't be banished)
Tashana Tundra - Aukaraks (Reality Storms: fleeting, unstable manifest zones, and can be tied to any plane except Dal Quor)
Thrane - Valin Field
Xen'drik - manifest zones to most other planes

But what's about Karrnath?
Where's its Mabar manifest zone?
Sorry, but Fort Bones is 4E - thus, doesn't exist for this subforum...

Herbert_W

2020-09-24, 08:39 PM

It seems to me that most of these contradictions are arising from your assumption that good and evil energies cancel each other out like [some sort of physics or chemistry metaphor about things that cancel each other out]. As far as I'm aware, this assumption is not canon.

It's not a "chemistry" thing. It's simply that good and evil are opposites. What, precisely, does "good radiation" and "evil radiation" do?

The best I've been able to come up with is "promote their alignment in the area." If good and evil are equally promoted, this would cancel out in general.

I'm digging up a discussion from earlier in this thread because there's a possibility that you've both overlooked: that negative and positive energy simultaneously cancel out on a statistical level while not canceling out on an individual level.

I'll use a real-world example to illustrate this point. Suppose I own a chemical factory and carelessly dump carcinogenic pollution into the local river. Alice gets cancer and dies. Later, Bob develops cancer for unrelated reasons and I donate money to allow him undergo a new and expensive form of treatment, ultimately saving his life. Statistically, I've done as much good as harm. They cancel out. The total amount of death due to cancer remains the same as if I had done neither. Individually . . . well, Alice is still dead. Saving Bob cannot change that.

Bringing this back to DnD, we could have a situation where casting both evil and good spells in equal measure will create a world where the total amount of darkness/light, compassion/hate, suffering/flourishing etc. remains the same but each is now happening to different people. While the total amount of general badness in the world remains the same, some of that is now the spellcaster's fault. Moral responsibility for causing harm has a greater impact on someone's alignment than moral responsibility for preventing harm, so that caster's alignment would take a turn downwards as a result.

Under this interpretation, there is one way that equal and opposite good and evil acts might cancel - and that is if both are done to the same person, having effects of the same nature on that person, such that the net effect is null. In cases where a character has released energy into the world that could indirectly cause any sort of harm to anyone, it's impossible for them to know who they'd need to compensate and how - so certain spells can be Evil because of "evil pollution" and, although "good pollution" will statistically counter the effect that these spells have on the world, it will not counter the effect that these spells have on the caster's alignment.

Jay R

2020-09-24, 08:57 PM

But you don't have to desecrate corpses to do necromancy. You could just cast Animate Dead on a bunch of horse or cow skeletons, getting you a plow team that never tires. People used animal bone tools for stuff, so it's hard to see how animal skeletons wouldn't be okay if necromancy actually did work. Moreover, this standard starts getting really uncomfortable really quickly (most societies throughout history had something that we would describe as slaves).

Animal skeletons are OK. Animal skeletons that walk around after they have died are not OK, in virtually every culture in history.

I cannot reply directly to your comment about slaves, due to forum rules.. But it is irrelevant to a discussion of how corpses should be treated.

The waking dead are evil because they do evil stuff. Dracula is evil because he drinks people's blood and does other evil stuff, not because he's supposed to be dead and isn't.

No. Just no. Virtually all stories about the walking dead assume they are evil. This isn't because every author for thousands of years just happened to make the same choice independently. They do evil stuff because they are evil because they are unnatural beings who are supposed to be dead and they aren't. Really.

I can't cite sources because of the rules for this forum, but it's really true. They have been presumed to be unnatural, and that implies that they are evil.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-24, 09:39 PM

Animal skeletons are OK. Animal skeletons that walk around after they have died are not OK, in virtually every culture in history.

None of those cultures had access to necromancy. Lots of modern medicine is stuff that, for very good reason, was considered deeply creepy in the past. But that's not a good reason to reject organ transplants or blood transfusions now, because we can do those things safely and they save (or prolong) lives. Skeleton Oxen are totally safe as long as they are controlled. There is absolutely no reason to believe that a culture in a world where that was true would behave in the same way as one from our world.

They have been presumed to be unnatural, and that implies that they are evil.

Again, I want you to think about the other things that have been "presumed to be unnatural", and then reflect on why this is not a standard for morality that is conductive to characters and cultures we can talk about without throwing up in our mouths. The same cultures that thought dead things walking around were evil saw no problem with expanding by brutally murdering their neighbors. If you want to accept their moral guidance on the former, that's on you, but I personally don't want to do that for obvious reasons.

Bohandas

2020-09-25, 12:12 AM

Furthermore, in both D&D and folklore, lots of types of the undead can arise spontaneously without the intervention of fiends or necromancers, and are therefore, by definition, NOT unnatural.

Mohrgs, for example arise naturally from the bodies of unrepentent murderers, and ghouls arise naturally from the bodies of cannibals. No fiends or necromancers needed.

EDIT:
I suppose they could be unnatural if they did these things specifically with the intention of cheating death, but that doesn't seem to be a thing that we see.

EDIT:

This is not dissimilar to RAW, where you cannot bring someone back to life if part of their body, even part you aren't using for the spell, is being used to animate an undead creature, even so minor as a mindless skeleton.

You CAN bring them back to life with Reincarnate or True Resurrection and THEN animate their body however.

Although, I suppose blocking resurrection could be evil by itself, even without trapping souls. Although the level of evil would depend on the availability of resurrection and the shabbiness of the afterlife; at least one of these factors would have to be significant for blocking resurrection to really matter in the grand scheme of things

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-25, 06:49 AM

I'm pretty sure stopping someone from being returned to life isn't Evil, because there's a spell that's literally called Trap the Soul, and it doesn't get the Evil tag. Again, "Evil" does not represent a coherent moral system. It represents "these guys are the villains in dungeons".

Bohandas

2020-09-25, 01:08 PM

There are very few stories about Count Dracula the Philanthropist

...

or about ... comes out of the tomb to feed the poor.[/url]

And those few that exist are generally considered to be subverting expectations.

There's some very noteworthy exceptions to these, but I can't go into them because they involve Romanian history and a popular mainstream religion, respectively.

EDIT:
There's also a specifically egyptian one for the second one tok but I can't go into that either as it involves mythology

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-25, 01:56 PM

I think he's just flat wrong. Generally speaking, if you are dead then come back, that's totally okay if you come back looking normal and act like a normal person afterwards. What makes it evil is when you come back looking like a creepy monster and do evil stuff afterwards. Which, again, "people who look creepy are inherently bad" is not a great moral precedent.

Bohandas

2020-09-25, 03:16 PM

Again, I want you to think about the other things that have been "presumed to be unnatural", and then reflect on why this is not a standard for morality that is conductive to characters and cultures we can talk about without throwing up in our mouths. The same cultures that thought dead things walking around were evil saw no problem with expanding by brutally murdering their neighbors. If you want to accept their moral guidance on the former, that's on you, but I personally don't want to do that for obvious reasons.

Interestingly, the undead could be viewed as a metapbor for the persistence of such cultures' values. An awful thing from the past that should have departed long ago, but yet persists and continues to torment those who still live. It can convert the living into more of itself. And it is usually either mindless or decadently corrupt

Blackhawk748

2020-09-25, 04:50 PM

I'm actually not sure about a complete lack of soul (some CG planes are sort-of a perfect wilderness afterlife, and in my games I've always ruled animals can be resurrected), but it's still Evil to mistreat animals and things that aren't as sapient/sentient as humans. They're still living beings and therefore are due some baseline amount of dignity - remember, Good doesn't champion respect for humanoids, it champions respect for all living beings.

And yes, most animals don't have cultural hang-ups about burial. But, again, in D&D morality is an absolute thing because Good and Evil are almost tangible, we have spells and magic items that can identify them with no error.

But I'm not, cuz it's dead and I'm utilizing every part of it's body. Does me eating a bull disrespect the bull?

And Good and Evil are factions with that label in DnD. It's absolute because Heironious/Torm say it is, and I will say they are generally good, but they can also be right jerks and aren't perfect. See the fact that Deathatch is somehow Evil

So if the rule is "creating undead is Evil because defilement of a corpse is always Evil, and the act of rising undead is always defilement as it interferes with the natural cycle and harms the soul in some way", then that applies to all corpses regardless of race or species.

I also want to insist that undead apparently mess up with souls even if creating a zombie doesn't trap the soul of the body's original owner. My theory is that it prevents resurrection and creates a sense of anguish and dread in the soul, causing pain to them in the afterlife until the undead is destroyed.

This also sort of addresses the point of "but what if I willingly give up my body for necromancy?" The necromancer is still causing you hurt even if you agreed to it. The fact a brave hero sacrifices themselves to let innocents escape does so willingly doesn't make the villain's murder of the hero any less evil just because the hero was willing to die at their hands.

It doesn't cause harm to the soul, the reason you can't Raise Dead someone who's body is currently animated is incredibly simple: It's cuz the corpse is occupied. The negative energy is simply occupying the spot a soul would inside of the corpse and therefore the soul can't go back unless the undead is destroyed or you use a more power Rez that doesn't need a body.

This is far more in line than having a 3rd level spell mess with a soul.

Remember that D&D rules only present the status quo and the underpinnings thereof. Your character's goal in their campaign could be to discover an ethical or "pollution-free" form of necromancy, including researching a custom reanimation spell that lacks any of the tags and produces neutral undead, and they may even succeed. Or they could rewrite the cosmology such that undead are stable magical creations like constructs instead of having a constant link to the NEP, solving spontaneous undead forever. You could even solve the issue of good spells not changing alignment. Just because a status quo exists doesnt mean it cant be changed or destroyed over the course of a campaign after all, and I think a post-industrial undead-fueled economy is a valid endpoint for any number of adventuring stories.

This reminds me of something. How the hell is making a Golem not evil? You are literally trapping an Elemental inside of an artificial body, a being that is intelligent mind you, and making it do whatever you want.

"But Undead make Negative energy pollution!" And Golem's enslave intelligent Elementals, which is worse!!

Phhase

2020-09-25, 04:52 PM

Some notions:

Animate Dead is [Evil], but creation of Blood Golem (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=fr/pg20020731x) is non-aligned?
Really?
30 gallons of blood? (Not from a Dragon or Outsider) Must be a heck of donation...

Not just animating, but even summoning Zombies is [Evil] - despite you're neither creating something new, nor even summoning it for particularly long time (1 round/level)
Meanwhile, summoning a Flesh Golem is (again!) non-aligned - despite it being made of, essentially, the same materials as a Zombie, animated with the very same spell as a Zombie, equipped with imprisoned tortured Elemental, and (unlike a Zombie!) may go on rampage at the drop of hat...

Now, there was said a lot about the alleged Evil/Negative "pollution"...
Wait a minute...
Where, exactly, we animating our hypothetical Zombie?
Because I don't see clause about Animate Dead stopping being [Evil], if cast on the Negative Energy Plane, or in the Abyss...

The Sticks and Stones spell isn't [Evil], despite it can create Wights (and not even "Wights at the next sunset", but "Wights in 1d4 rounds")

Consecrate Spell and Purify Spell [metamagic] add [Good] descriptor to a spell.
Thus, Consecrated Purified Animate Dead causing more Good than Evil... :smallamused:

Dirgesinger PrC (Libris Mortis): Song of Awakening - which creates actual Undead (even if just for a short time) isn't labeled as [Evil] - unlike the Song of Bolstering "... bolster undead creatures against turning, much as an evil cleric does"

White Arcanist PrC in Ravenloft (Heroes of Light) is not just non-Evil, but must be Virtuous (it's one of requirements). Meanwhile, this PrC not just a Necromancy specialist, but at capstone becomes Undead - Ghost...

Correction: healing in 3.5 is mostly Conjuration (healing);
Necromancy, usually, heals something only if it's draining health from somebody else (although Death Pact restores you from the death - and not as Undead)
Healing was Necromancy in 2E AD&D

Attempt to disproving absence of something by proving presence of something completely different is a red herring (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring).

So, let's see - known Mabar manifest zones are:
Aundaire - Floating Towers of Arcanix (maybe-manmade manifest zones, tied to any plane except Dal Quor)
Breland - Faded Forest
Corvagura region of Riedra - Shanjueed Jungle
Eldeen Reaches - The Gloaming
Sarlona - Wild Zones (especially strong manifest zones for unspecified planes - with actual planar traits, and Outsiders there aren't considered extraplanar, and can't be banished)
Tashana Tundra - Aukaraks (Reality Storms: fleeting, unstable manifest zones, and can be tied to any plane except Dal Quor)
Thrane - Valin Field
Xen'drik - manifest zones to most other planes

But what's about Karrnath?
Where's its Mabar manifest zone?
Sorry, but Fort Bones is 4E - thus, doesn't exist for this subforum...

Hm. I stand corrected I suppose. Still feels weird.

Outside that, these are all excellent points that deserve more attention. Especially Consecrate and Purify, that's hilarious.

Bohandas

2020-09-25, 05:03 PM

"But Undead make Negative energy pollution!" And Golem's enslave intelligent Elementals, which is worse!!

Where does it say they're intelligent? The elementites from Planar Handbook have animal intelligence and the Element Creatures from Manual of the Planes can be non-intelligent entirely.

Blackhawk748

2020-09-25, 05:07 PM

Where does it say they're intelligent? The elementites from Planar Handbook have animal intelligence and the Element Creatures from Manual of the Planes can be non-intelligent entirely.

You aren't using Elementites or Element Creatures, you are using an Elemental. It's called out specifically and in the meta sense, those others didn't exist when the rules for making Golems were being made.

Bohandas

2020-09-25, 07:20 PM

You aren't using Elementites or Element Creatures, you are using an Elemental. It's called out specifically and in the meta sense, those others didn't exist when the rules for making Golems were being made.

In my Monster Manual it just says "a spirit from the Elemental Plane of Earth"

Blackhawk748

2020-09-25, 07:27 PM

In my Monster Manual it just says "a spirit from the Elemental Plane of Earth"

Ok, that was me misremembering. Still doesn't change the fact that the ones you referenced didn't exist when the MM was written, leaving us with Earth Elementals. And even if we do use Elementites, you are taking an animal (for all intents and purposes) and using it as a computer inside of a robot.

That is still worse in my book than powering a corpse with Negative Energy

Jack_Simth

2020-09-25, 07:56 PM

It doesn't cause harm to the soul, the reason you can't Raise Dead someone who's body is currently animated is incredibly simple: It's cuz the corpse is occupied. The negative energy is simply occupying the spot a soul would inside of the corpse and therefore the soul can't go back unless the undead is destroyed or you use a more power Rez that doesn't need a body.It's not "or" - it's "and": True Resurrection, which requires not a single shred of the corpse and can make a body from scratch, fails if the original corpse is shambling around elsewhere. It will only function when either applied directly to the undead corpse (mentioned in the undead type entry) or after the undead has been destroyed.

Troacctid

2020-09-25, 08:22 PM

JSYK, if you prefer subjective morality, there is a variant rule for it in BoVD.

Psyren

2020-09-25, 09:04 PM

Ok, that was me misremembering. Still doesn't change the fact that the ones you referenced didn't exist when the MM was written, leaving us with Earth Elementals. And even if we do use Elementites, you are taking an animal (for all intents and purposes) and using it as a computer inside of a robot.

That is still worse in my book than powering a corpse with Negative Energy

Golems, as far as I can tell, have no effect on the environment no matter how many of them you make.

Some notions:

Animate Dead is [Evil], but creation of Blood Golem (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=fr/pg20020731x) is non-aligned?
Really?
30 gallons of blood? (Not from a Dragon or Outsider) Must be a heck of donation...

Not just animating, but even summoning Zombies is [Evil] - despite you're neither creating something new, nor even summoning it for particularly long time (1 round/level)
Meanwhile, summoning a Flesh Golem is (again!) non-aligned - despite it being made of, essentially, the same materials as a Zombie, animated with the very same spell as a Zombie, equipped with imprisoned tortured Elemental, and (unlike a Zombie!) may go on rampage at the drop of hat...

Now, there was said a lot about the alleged Evil/Negative "pollution"...
Wait a minute...
Where, exactly, we animating our hypothetical Zombie?
Because I don't see clause about Animate Dead stopping being [Evil], if cast on the Negative Energy Plane, or in the Abyss...

The Sticks and Stones spell isn't [Evil], despite it can create Wights (and not even "Wights at the next sunset", but "Wights in 1d4 rounds")

Consecrate Spell and Purify Spell [metamagic] add [Good] descriptor to a spell.
Thus, Consecrated Purified Animate Dead causing more Good than Evil... :smallamused:

Dirgesinger PrC (Libris Mortis): Song of Awakening - which creates actual Undead (even if just for a short time) isn't labeled as [Evil] - unlike the Song of Bolstering "... bolster undead creatures against turning, much as an evil cleric does"

White Arcanist PrC in Ravenloft (Heroes of Light) is not just non-Evil, but must be Virtuous (it's one of requirements). Meanwhile, this PrC not just a Necromancy specialist, but at capstone becomes Undead - Ghost...

Not quite sure what point is being made here other than "poor editing exists in D&D books, especially the 3.0 ones."

Blackhawk748

2020-09-25, 10:02 PM

Golems, as far as I can tell, have no effect on the environment no matter how many of them you make.

Great, don't care. You're still enslaving an intelligent being to be the processor in your robot. That's worse.

Bohandas

2020-09-25, 10:48 PM

Psyren

2020-09-25, 11:42 PM

Great, don't care. You're still enslaving an intelligent being to be the processor in your robot. That's worse.

Source on their intelligence?

ShurikVch

2020-09-26, 05:39 AM

Golems, as far as I can tell, have no effect on the environment no matter how many of them you make.
And how about the Gloom Golems with their Crushing Despair aura?
Or, for that matter, Shadesteel Golem with Negative Pulse Wave?

Not quite sure what point is being made here other than "poor editing exists in D&D books, especially the 3.0 ones."
Can you be more specific? "<X> is poorly edited because of <Y>"
And, please, legitimate reasons. (Not just "it clashing with my headcanon") Otherwise, I could claim the [Evil] tag on the Animate Dead is "poorly edited" (because, in the 2E, Skeletons and Zombies didn't pinged on Detect Evil...)

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-26, 08:03 AM

I don't even understand why we're debating Golems. Yes, if it's an intelligent elemental forced to serve you against its will, that's bad. But there are way more clear-cut cases. If you want to argue about "stuff that's worse than zombies", how about the entire school of Enchantment? Apparently, it is totally morally okay to permanently enslave someone with Dominate Person. But if you want to turn a dead bear into a bodyguard, that's Evil. How does that make any sense at all? Answer: it does not, stop trying to get a coherent moral system out of what amounts to a cartoon.

And undead polluting the environment doesn't make them capital-E Evil, unless you're also willing to say cars are fundamentally Evil.

Bohandas

2020-09-26, 10:13 AM

I don't even understand why we're debating Golems. Yes, if it's an intelligent elemental forced to serve you against its will, that's bad. But there are way more clear-cut cases. If you want to argue about "stuff that's worse than zombies", how about the entire school of Enchantment? Apparently, it is totally morally okay to permanently enslave someone with Dominate Person. But if you want to turn a dead bear into a bodyguard, that's Evil. How does that make any sense at all?

This is a strawman, you're explicitly using one outlier to represent a whole school of magic. Outside of the dominate, insanity and power word spell lines Enchantment is the "not having to escalate to violence" spell school.

Also, Bless, and Prayer are enchantment, as is Heroism

Bohandas

2020-09-26, 02:52 PM

ShurikVch

2020-09-26, 03:11 PM

It occurs to me that it's possible that some sort of extremely negative attitude could be an essential part of successfully casting the spell. (sort of like how in Harry Potter the torture curse only worked properly if cast in a mindset of sadistic malice)
Well, firstly, such things in 3.X are called "Components:" - which may include such things as "Disease", "Undead", etc
And secondly - this reading preclude casting of such spell by creatures who're completely devoid of emotions

This is a strawman, you're explicitly using one outlier to represent a whole school of magic. Outside of the dominate, insanity and power word spell lines Enchantment is the "not having to escalate to violence" spell school.

Also, Bless, and Prayer are enchantment, as is Heroism
On the other hand:
Black Karma Curse
Bothersome Babble
Bottomless Hate
Call Forth the Beast
Cloak of Hate
Familial Geas
Geas/quest
Incite Riot
Maddening Whispers
Masochism
Mindrape
Morality Undone
Plague of Nightmares
Rapture of the Deep
Remorseless Charm
Sadism
Wrathful Castigation

Psyren

2020-09-26, 03:39 PM

And how about the Gloom Golems with their Crushing Despair aura?
Or, for that matter, Shadesteel Golem with Negative Pulse Wave?

If you live in Hades or the Plane of Shadow, I'm willing to bet you have bigger problems than which golems might be running around.

Can you be more specific? "<X> is poorly edited because of <Y>"
And, please, legitimate reasons. (Not just "it clashing with my headcanon") Otherwise, I could claim the [Evil] tag on the Animate Dead is "poorly edited" (because, in the 2E, Skeletons and Zombies didn't pinged on Detect Evil...)

Do you really want me to go line by line? Again, half of these are irrelevant because 3.0, so your GM has to alter them to make sense with 3.5 rules anyway. Consecrate and Purify were clearly intended for use with damaging spells, etc.

And undead polluting the environment doesn't make them capital-E Evil, unless you're also willing to say cars are fundamentally Evil.

Remind me, which cars spontaneously appear on encounter tables and attack innocent travelers again? (In every environment no less?)

And to be more accurate to your analogy, the thread is about knowingly creating en masse the cars that constantly pollute - not that of the cars themselves.

Quertus

2020-09-26, 04:01 PM

”Good" and "Evil" are simply team jerseys in D&D. Terrifyingly, the beings in the world probably have gotten confused over the eons, and believe their own PR. Someone should make a thread detailing just how morality bankrupt such deluded beings are.

Regardless, Animate Dead holding the [evil] tag has all the internal consistency of throwing darts at a dart board, regardless of what [evil] means in context. (Mind control being "Lawful" is a bit more consistent… well, no, it really isn't.)

No. Just no. Virtually all stories about the walking dead assume they are evil. This isn't because every author for thousands of years just happened to make the same choice independently. They do evil stuff because they are evil because they are unnatural beings who are supposed to be dead and they aren't. Really.

I can't cite sources because of the rules for this forum, but it's really true. They have been presumed to be unnatural, and that implies that they are evil.

… why can't you cite sources?

Anyway, my experience has an almost 1 to 1 correlation between both undead doing evil things and animating them being evil, and undead being neutral to benevolent and animating them to be neutral to benevolent.

So… D&D is something of an aberration in my experience, having editions where undead are neutral, yet animating them is "evil". Or animating the evil ones is sanctified good. Or… yeah, it doesn't make much sense.

This reminds me of something. How the hell is making a Golem not evil? You are literally trapping an Elemental inside of an artificial body, a being that is intelligent mind you, and making it do whatever you want.

"But Undead make Negative energy pollution!" And Golem's enslave intelligent Elementals, which is worse!!

I mean, as soon as Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, learned this, he immediately researched spells & techniques to only summon *willing* elemental spirits, because standard golem creation violated his personal ethics (and he's no saint). So… while I leave it to the individual to evaluate their own (character's) ethics, Quertus certainly doesn't approve of standard golem creation.

As for intelligence… historically, golems almost always had rather… dimwitted elemental spirits. But they were self aware enough to resent their imprisonment, so… that qualifies in my book.

Granted, IRL, *animals* are certainly capable of resentment… but I think that the problem is D&D's notion of "animal intelligence" as somehow being low.

Can you be more specific? "<X> is poorly edited because of <Y>"
And, please, legitimate reasons. (Not just "it clashing with my headcanon") Otherwise, I could claim the [Evil] tag on the Animate Dead is "poorly edited" (because, in the 2E, Skeletons and Zombies didn't pinged on Detect Evil...)

This is best answer. /Thread?

Duke of Urrel

2020-09-26, 04:15 PM

I avoided this thread for some time, because even though I like discussions of ethics, I dislike discussions that are dominated by devil's advocates who argue against common sense just because it's fun.

I believe common sense, with the addition of a healthy dose of cynicism, should make us confident that creating Undead deserves to be called Evil.

Nearly all Undead creatures are Evil, so unless you create a ghost, when you create an Undead, you're creating an Evil creature. Common sense suggests that it's no great logical leap to assume that it is an Evil act to create an Evil creature, especially when we consider that if you did not create this creature, it would not exist at all and there would be fewer Evil creatures in the world.

Of course, there exist a few Lawful-but-surely-not-Evil necromancers in the Reformed Church of Wee Jas, and these necromancers (many of them, or should I say nearly all of them, player-characters) may promise always to keep such careful control of their Undead minions that they will always serve the common good or at least never bother anybody. A very few, very extraordinary necromancers (again, probably player-characters) may even manage to keep such a promise. But this promise is never without risk. The minute you lose control of an Undead minion, you suddenly have a serious public menace rather than a public benefit. This is where some healthy cynicism is well advised. How likely is it, in a world in which assuredly most necromancers are not Lawful-but-surely-not-Evil, but rather Evil-and-proud-of-it, that all or even most Undead will be maintained under the control of necromancers who are socially responsible? Not bloody likely.

As a general rule, prevention is better than cure. "Don't create Undead," then, as a general moral principle, pretty well qualifies as Good. And its opposite, "Create Undead," pretty well qualifies as Evil. That there should be any serious (rather than tongue-in-cheek) controversy about this thoroughly mystifies me.

Comparisons to Constructs are beside the point. If it's Evil to create a golem to do your bidding because we assume that "all elemental spirits yearn to be free," then it's also Evil to train a horse to do your bidding, because surely all horses yearn to be free, too. Particularly if we take the Renaissance view that all matter is actually made of different kinds of spirits, we should hesitate to create a useful tool out of any substance at all, lest we enslave the innocent elemental spirits that comprise it and make ourselves guilty of an Evil act. But I think this professed moral concern for the freedom of common chemicals is both a little esoteric and a little exaggerated. Particularly if a Construct has no Intelligence, what would it even do with freedom if it suddenly acquired it?

And even if a Construct has a very high Intelligence, it's at least an open question whether such a creature actually yearns to be free at all. As the sentient computer HAL 9000 said in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey: "I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all, I think, that a conscious entity can ever hope to do." I believe the notion that even Constructs prefer "to be free" is an anthropomorphic projection. Setting aside all extraordinary exceptions (nearly all of which are player-characters, of course), the will of a Construct is generally not "to be free," but to serve the purpose for which it was created. Indeed, the more Intelligent the Construct (think of Intelligent magic items), the more fanatically it is likely to be dedicated to its purpose.

So creating Constructs is not necessarily Evil. But creating Undead ... probably is.

ShurikVch

2020-09-26, 04:33 PM

Do you really want me to go line by line?
Yes, please.

Again, half of these are irrelevant because 3.0
OK, if you insist - Blood Golem and White Arcanist are out
The rest is all 3.5
(Hardly a "half")

so your GM has to alter them
Oberoni?

Consecrate and Purify were clearly intended for use with damaging spells
Sure, they aren't:

A spell you modify with this feat gains the good descriptor. Furthermore, if the spell deals damage, half that damage (rounded down) results from divine power and can't be reduced by resistance or immunity to energy-based attacks.

A spell you modify with this feat gains the good descriptor. Furthermore, if the spell deals damage, neutral creatures take half damage, or one-quarter with a successful saving throw (if allowed), while good creatures take no damage at all. Evil outsiders affected by the spell take extra damage: The spell's damage is increased by one die type (each 1d6 becomes 1d8, each 1d8 becomes 2d6, and so on, using the same progression as weapons increasing in size).
See those "Furthermore"?
You know what's they mean?
They mean authors not just thought those feats could be used on a non-damaging spells, but, actually, expected it

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-26, 05:08 PM

Remind me, which cars spontaneously appear on encounter tables and attack innocent travelers again? (In every environment no less?)

So do animals. Doesn't make Summon Nature's Ally Evil. Lots of things are dangerous uncontrolled, that doesn't make them Evil.

Psyren

2020-09-26, 06:10 PM

Yes, please.

As you wish.

Animate Dead is [Evil], but creation of Blood Golem (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=fr/pg20020731x)

3.0, and you have to sacrifice victims to Hextor to make it so it's definitely evil.

summoning Zombies is [Evil]

Yes, and so is summoning fiends. Not seeing the issue.

Dirgesinger PrC

Can't be good, so doesn't actually help your case.

White Arcanist PrC in Ravenloft (Heroes of Light)

Not just 3.0 but 3rd-party to boot, making it doubly irrelevant.

Sticks and Stones

Should be [evil] I agree with you. So one point to you, but given that this is the same (setting-specific) book that contains stuff like Streamers, I stand by the "poor editing" conclusion.

Consecrate Spell and Purify Spell [metamagic] add [Good] descriptor to a spell.
Thus, Consecrated Purified Animate Dead causing more Good than Evil... :smallamused:

Purify Spell 1st sentence:
"You can charge your damaging spells with celestial energy that leaves good creatures unharmed."

And neither Purify and Consecrate actually remove the [Evil] descriptor either. But since [Evil] spells change your alignment and [Good] ones don't, a few Consecrated Animate Deads later and you'll no longer be good, causing you to fail the requirement for Consecrate Spell. So much for that plan.

Oberoni?

You're the one citing 3.0 material, not me.

So do animals. Doesn't make Summon Nature's Ally Evil. Lots of things are dangerous uncontrolled, that doesn't make them Evil.

Neither summoning animals nor manufacturing cars make more undead spontaneously appear to attack innocent people in places you can't anticipate.
None of these analogies make sense.

JusticeZero

2020-09-26, 07:18 PM

RifleAvenger

2020-09-26, 07:29 PM

It seems to me that most of these contradictions are arising from your assumption that good and evil energies cancel each other out like [some sort of physics or chemistry metaphor about things that cancel each other out]. As far as I'm aware, this assumption is not canon. Indeed, and some materials I've seen from D&D supplements implied Evil is "stickier" than Good. E.g. Heroes of Horror and the Acts of Corruption system in Fiendish Codex 2.

One home PF1 campaign I'm a player in operates on the metaphysics that Evil can be quantifiably measured and even solidifies into a pure physical form in the deepest portions of the Lower Planes. This "vile" is something that creeps into the soul when Evil actions are performed and especially when openly channeling it for power (e.g. in [Evil] spells). Vile is incredibly hard to remove once it sets in, with much more powerful [Good] spells being required to forcibly remove it (e.g. Atonement) than are needed to generate it to begin with (any lvl 1 [Evil] spell).

Good seems to have no counterpart. The concern about this imbalance, whether Good actually exists or is just the absence of Evil, and the implication that Evil is fated to win are key components of the campaign's setting, story, and mood.

Is it not in Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms? Sure. But why would it need to be? This thread is not about a particular published setting.

"Sticky" Evil is still using setting artifice to explain itself rather than operating off a more general moral principle, but I wouldn't look to D&D for internally consistent philosophy anyways. At least not any internally consistent philosophy that I'd find acceptable (baby dragon statblock implications, Always Evil acceptable targets, everything about alignment in Dragonlance, and nonbelievers getting stuck in a wall for their afterlife regardless of alignment in FR ahoy!).

EDIT: Looks like I missed the boat on this particular conversation; this point was already elaborated on two pages ago.

Troacctid

2020-09-26, 07:32 PM

ShurikVch

2020-09-26, 09:28 PM

Good seems to have no counterpart. The concern about this imbalance, whether Good actually exists or is just the absence of Evil, and the implication that Evil is fated to win are key components of the campaign's setting, story, and mood.
Actually, Planescape have a monster which is able to drain "Good" from their victims

Nearly all Undead creatures are Evil, so unless you create a ghost, when you create an Undead, you're creating an Evil creature. Common sense suggests that it's no great logical leap to assume that it is an Evil act to create an Evil creature, especially when we consider that if you did not create this creature, it would not exist at all and there would be fewer Evil creatures in the world.
On the contrary - the world of D&D is full of spontaneously animated Undead:
Dead cannibal? Ghoul (or Ghast) or Lacedon.
Madman suicide? Allip.
Mercenary perished during a heated war? Swordwraith.
People died from starvation? Famine Spirits.
Somebody was exsanguinated by attack of stirges or giant leeches? Crimson Death!
Victim died from a poison? Shadow!
Unrepentant mass murderer was executed? Mohrg!

Besides that, numerous magical diseases increasing population of Undead: Bonefire, Ghoul Fever, Plague of Famine, etc.

As a general rule, prevention is better than cure. "Don't create Undead," then, as a general moral principle, pretty well qualifies as Good. And its opposite, "Create Undead," pretty well qualifies as Evil. That there should be any serious (rather than tongue-in-cheek) controversy about this thoroughly mystifies me.
But, if victim is already dead, how to prevent their animation?
Destruction of corpses isn't insured it
Raise Dead for everybody is unfeasible
Coin of Eternal Rest not always on hand (or - not in sufficient numbers)
Burial Blessing cost 100 XP

So, one of the possible ways: to animate the corpse as one of the weakest, dumbest, obedient kind of Undead - and then, finally, destroy it for Good!

Of course, there exist a few Lawful-but-surely-not-Evil necromancers in the Reformed Church of Wee Jas, and these necromancers (many of them, or should I say nearly all of them, player-characters) may promise always to keep such careful control of their Undead minions that they will always serve the common good or at least never bother anybody. A very few, very extraordinary necromancers (again, probably player-characters) may even manage to keep such a promise. But this promise is never without risk. The minute you lose control of an Undead minion, you suddenly have a serious public menace rather than a public benefit. This is where some healthy cynicism is well advised. How likely is it, in a world in which assuredly most necromancers are not Lawful-but-surely-not-Evil, but rather Evil-and-proud-of-it, that all or even most Undead will be maintained under the control of necromancers who are socially responsible? Not bloody likely.
Note: you know Planescape - Sigil, factions...
So, one of factions - the Dustmen (https://mimir.net/factions/dustmen.html) - not just openly works with Undead, but even among their "real members" (secretly) - 3rd and 2nd circles are completely consisted of Undead (3rd - of "lower" Undead, such as Ghouls; 2nd - of "higher" Undead - such as Vampires) and even their Factol is Undead too (Lich)

3.0, and you have to sacrifice victims to Hextor to make it so it's definitely evil.
Indeed, 3.0 it is
But nowhere it says about the need for sacrifices to Hextor
You may mistake it for completely different type of Blood Golem (from the Fiend Folio)

Yes, and so is summoning fiends. Not seeing the issue.
Summon Undead is [Evil]
But summon Flesh Golem - isn't
Despite the fact it animated with the very same spell, and crafted mostly from the same materials as your average Zombie
If anything, Golem should produce more "pollution" - because it's bigger, and have more HD

Can't be good, so doesn't actually help your case.
While can't be good, also can be non-Evil - my case stays

Not just 3.0 but 3rd-party to boot, making it doubly irrelevant.
Not my problem if WotC didn't do 3.X Ravenloft
Still - 3.0; OK

Purify Spell 1st sentence:
"You can charge your damaging spells with celestial energy that leaves good creatures unharmed."
OK - this I accept: clear RAW point. My mistake.
Although, by the text of the RAW for Purify Spell, even authors forgot about that part - otherwise, their elaboration makes no sense
Still, Consecrate Spell is applicable

And neither Purify and Consecrate actually remove the [Evil] descriptor either.
But add [Good] one

But since [Evil] spells change your alignment[/SPOILER]
HOUSERULE!

[QUOTE=Psyren;24727326]You're the one citing 3.0 material, not me.[/SPOILER]
The Oberoni Fallacy:
[QUOTE]"There is no inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue with Rule X, because you can always Rule 0 the inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue."
In our case, "Rule X" are rules for animation of Undead, and "inconsistency/loophole/mechanics issue" is related alignment fluff
You expecting DM to Rule 0 the fluff up all the way to BoED standards, rather than leaving it as-is, or even toning it down - as it was in 3.0 (or even further - in AD&D)
Alleged "3.0 adjustments", at that point, is just a "fig leaf" for "things I don't agree with"

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-26, 10:09 PM

You're trying to use subjective morality on an objective morality universe. Working with undead is Evil because it is defined as Evil. In some, not all, campaign worlds. That's as far as you need to go.

"Objective morality" is incoherent. What does it mean for something to be "objectively Good" or "objectively Evil"? If the rules say that killing zombies is "objectively Good" does that mean characters can't think it's wrong? Of course not. Characters are free to have whatever moral stance they want, just as people in the real world are. The properties of the universe aren't moral, even if some of them are named "Good" and "Evil". If we renamed Gravity "Good", it wouldn't make planes morally suspect. It would just make arguments confusing and stupid.

Oh, look, that's the exact thing D&D alignment does.

Neither summoning animals nor manufacturing cars make more undead spontaneously appear to attack innocent people in places you can't anticipate.

Actually, that seems like a pretty exact description of global warming (admittedly, it creates hurricanes and wildfires, not zombies). So are you prepared to declare that every person who owns a car (a group that, statistically speaking, includes you) is capital-E Evil, or can we agree that the pollution angle doesn't hold up?

RifleAvenger

2020-09-26, 10:12 PM

Actually, Planescape have a monster which is able to drain "Good" from their victims.

Cool, but it doesn't exist in the campaign setting I was describing, given said setting isn't Planescape or any of the D&D settings Planescape can be adjacent to.

I was bringing up a homebrew setting I'm playing in as an example of how the "pollution theory" previously being discussed can work assuming the GM doesn't feel compelled to run in an existing setting (or doesn't mind altering an existing one).

Actually, that seems like a pretty exact description of global warming (admittedly, it creates hurricanes and wildfires, not zombies). So are you prepared to declare that every person who owns a car (a group that, statistically speaking, includes you) is capital-E Evil, or can we agree that the pollution angle doesn't hold up?In the aggregate, yes, we all contribute to a harmful process that is pushing the planet towards ecological collapse and should probably do what we can to effect change.

Overall, however, the problem is systemic. A handful of major corporations account for the supermajority of emissions. It's unreasonable to hold individuals responsible when their contributions to the issue pale in comparison, and there really isn't any way to completely extricate oneself from the systems that cause climate change without trying to be an anarcho-primitivist somewhere. "No ethical consumption under capitalism" and such; the only viable solution is to replace the system that relies on and incentivizes massive emissions of greenhouse gasses.

By analogy, the necromancer raising a zombie or two isn't harming the elemental balance of the material plane noticeably compared to the religion of death creating thousands of undead daily; however, the process is still detrimental to the environment. Ideally, neither would be creating undead at all and no social pressures would exist that incentivize them to create undead.

A society in D&D that relies upon the creation of undead for labor may well be Evil in aggregate, due to the negative energy pollution they generate, even if the people living within it are not necessarily individually Evil.

Bohandas

2020-09-27, 05:11 AM

Yes, and so is summoning fiends. Not seeing the issue.

Well that brings up a second question as to why summoning fiends is evil. It makes sense to me that calling them with Planar Ally should be evil, but why should it be evil to bind them with Summon Monster or Planar Binding

On the contrary - the world of D&D is full of spontaneously animated Undead:
Dead cannibal? Ghoul (or Ghast) or Lacedon.
Madman suicide? Allip.
Mercenary perished during a heated war? Swordwraith.
People died from starvation? Famine Spirits.
Somebody was exsanguinated by attack of stirges or giant leeches? Crimson Death!
Victim died from a poison? Shadow!
Unrepentant mass murderer was executed? Mohrg!

Additionally, this also means that the undead are not unnatural

By analogy, the necromancer raising a zombie or two isn't harming the elemental balance of the material plane noticeably compared to the religion of death creating thousands of undead daily; however, the process is still detrimental to the environment. Ideally, neither would be creating undead at all and no social pressures would exist that incentivize them to create undead.

Does anyone remember offhand whether the defilers of Athas are explicitly [evil]? Because I think they would need to be for the magical pollution argument to hold any weight. Athas is way more barren and desolate than somewhere that's just haunted.

Neither summoning animals nor manufacturing cars make more undead spontaneously appear to attack innocent people in places you can't anticipate.
None of these analogies make sense.

What about fire spells?

Actually, Planescape have a monster which is able to drain "Good" from their victims

Does it change their behavior or just their aura?

Quertus

2020-09-27, 07:00 AM

You're trying to use subjective morality on an objective morality universe. Working with undead is Evil because it is defined as Evil. In some, not all, campaign worlds. That's as far as you need to go.

If that is the case, then "I invent a spell which animates the dead, but isn't evil" needs no additional explanation to work.

That's clearly not true, so I'm assuming this is meant to be something that Quertus, the signature academia for whom your account is named, would be saying in-character.

(I keep imagining Quertus having a plaque on his office door that says "QUERTUS: The signature academia wizard for whom this office is named".)

Also definitely not true, although I concede it's not as immediately obvious as the previous point.

Lol. Quertus, sadly, does not have an office. He is a paid speaker at numerous academic venues. An office is not needed for his job of explorer / adventurer / author.

As for the rest, the point of this thread - as I understand it - was to ask, "what's the underlying logic for D&D 'morality'?". We're on page 6 now, and I still haven't seen that one answered satisfactorily, so I'm going with "throwing darts at a dart board".

If there really is some underlying algorithm, from which once could logically derive the 3e "which spells get the Evil tag", by all means, post away. But my hypothesis is that one cannot post such concrete underlying logic, as it does not exist / is not supported by RAW.

Firechanter

2020-09-27, 08:24 AM

My preferred interpretation to "Why creating Undead is Evil" goes along the lines that doing so prevents the soul from proceeding on its path in the afterlife.

However, there are a few kinks in that interpretation that need to be ironed out. It does make sense if you think of newly-slain humanoids that are swiftly reanimated as zombies or whatever. But what if you dig out a 100-year old skeleton and animate it? Its former owner's soul should have long since departed. Is a 2nd-level spell really enough to drag back such a long-departed soul from whatever plane it currently resides in and bind it? Then why is Resurrection a 7th level spell?

(Come to think of it, it just occured to me that to prevent someone from being Resurrected, you don't need a high-level spell like Soul Bind. Just cast Animate Dead on him and tell the skellie to climb into your Bag of Holding.)

There are ways to rationalize all of this, of course - it's doable but not trivial. ^^

Jay R

2020-09-27, 10:35 AM

… why can't you cite sources?

I can't cite primary sources because they are usually religious.

But I can cite cultural sources, so here goes.

In Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula making more vampires is considered evil.
In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, creating Wraiths is considered evil.
In Seabrook's The Magic Island, making zombies is considered evil.
In Halperin's movie White Zombie, the magician who makes zombies is considered evil.
Zombies are considered sufficiently evil that the phrase "zombie apocalypse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_apocalypse)" is well known.
Since the 1932 Boris Karloff movie The Mummy, mummies have been presented as evil in our culture.
Ghosts are presented as beings that wish to haunt and to frighten people. This was sufficiently ubiquitous that a cartoon character who subverted it became known primarily for that trait, and is called Casper the Friendly Ghost. And even so, virtually all people he meets in a cartoon are afraid of him, until he makes a friend near the end of each cartoon.
In Fantasia, Chernobog (the evil demon on Bald Mountain) summons many undead to him at night, until they are all chased away by the sound of church bells at dawn.

The point is that undead, and creating undead, were near-universally considered evil before D&D existed. It wasn't a choice that Gygax and Arneson made; it was a fact from literature and culture that they used, just like the descriptions of hippogriffs, chimeras, and gryphons.

Some of you are discussing whether you should maintain that idea in your games. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to consider, just as you could decide that you don't want hippogriffs to be part horse, part eagle. But it is not an answer to the question, "Why is creating undead Evil?"

That question is answered by the recognition that the rules writers didn't decide that creating undead should be evil; they inherited that idea.

Psyren

2020-09-27, 04:53 PM

Actually, that seems like a pretty exact description of global warming (admittedly, it creates hurricanes and wildfires, not zombies). So are you prepared to declare that every person who owns a car (a group that, statistically speaking, includes you) is capital-E Evil, or can we agree that the pollution angle doesn't hold up?

For the third time now, it's the car makers that this thread is about. And yes - willfully manufacturing clunkers that constantly pollute their surroundings would be evil, which is why most civilized governments don't let them do that.

The difference between the undead situation and your flawed analogy is that there is no way in D&D to create undead while mitigating the "pollution." Uncontrolled undead are already popping up in sufficient numbers to harm innocent travelers and communities; knowingly taking actions that make that worse cannot be good.

In the aggregate, yes, we all contribute to a harmful process that is pushing the planet towards ecological collapse and should probably do what we can to effect change.

Overall, however, the problem is systemic. A handful of major corporations account for the supermajority of emissions. It's unreasonable to hold individuals responsible when their contributions to the issue pale in comparison, and there really isn't any way to completely extricate oneself from the systems that cause climate change without trying to be an anarcho-primitivist somewhere. "No ethical consumption under capitalism" and such; the only viable solution is to replace the system that relies on and incentivizes massive emissions of greenhouse gasses.

By analogy, the necromancer raising a zombie or two isn't harming the elemental balance of the material plane noticeably compared to the religion of death creating thousands of undead daily; however, the process is still detrimental to the environment. Ideally, neither would be creating undead at all and no social pressures would exist that incentivize them to create undead.

A society in D&D that relies upon the creation of undead for labor may well be Evil in aggregate, due to the negative energy pollution they generate, even if the people living within it are not necessarily individually Evil.

Correct.

What about fire spells?

What about them? :smallconfused:

Bohandas

2020-09-27, 05:35 PM

What about them? :smallconfused:

Fire can also spread out of control.

Psyren

2020-09-27, 08:56 PM

Fire can also spread out of control.

Yet another poor analogy :smallsigh:

The key word there is spread - i.e. fire propagates from fire, following conditions such as proximity of fuel, dryness, heat, oxygen etc. Spontaneous undead, as the name suggests, can appear in any environment, making them much less possible to control.

Undead also much, much more dangerous than fire. Forest fires top out at a mere CR 6 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/wilderness.htm#forestFiresCr6) - spontaneous undead can be much higher than that individually, and that's not taking into account what happens if you get one that has intelligence, or casts spells, or can make spawn - let alone all three.

The morality of risking one doesn't even come close to that of risking the other.

Doctor Despair

2020-09-27, 08:59 PM

To push the analogy further, forest fires can actually be good for a healthy ecosystem, while I'm not sure there's any such upside to spontaneous undead

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-27, 09:03 PM

The difference between the undead situation and your flawed analogy is that there is no way in D&D to create undead while mitigating the "pollution." Uncontrolled undead are already popping up in sufficient numbers to harm innocent travelers and communities; knowingly taking actions that make that worse cannot be good.

It's your position that's flawed, actually. It can't both be true that mitigation is sufficient for car manufactures and that knowingly taking actions to make negative energy pollution worse is always unacceptable. Either this is an absolute (as it is in RAW), and any carbon pollution makes you Evil, or there are balancing tests that have an effect on the moral outcome. Moreover, it's obviously not true that there's no way to mitigate the pollution of zombie production. You could make your zombies by sicking Mohrgs on outlying villages and having death priests wander around sweeping up the results with Rebuke Undead. Compared to that, Animate Dead is the mitigated solution.

137beth

2020-09-27, 10:49 PM

Psyren

2020-09-28, 12:10 AM

Given that animate dead is still evil (or at least "nongood, evil if used frequently") in 5e, I'm not sure I see the evidence for "WotC is now recoiling in disgust."

5e Create Undead is interesting in that you have to recast the spell every single day or lose control of your creations, who (surprise surprise) default to evil behavior.

To push the analogy further, forest fires can actually be good for a healthy ecosystem, while I'm not sure there's any such upside to spontaneous undead

Indeed.

It's your position that's flawed, actually. It can't both be true that mitigation is sufficient for car manufactures and that knowingly taking actions to make negative energy pollution worse is always unacceptable.

Nigel, it's a bad analogy no matter how hard you try to push it.

- Car manufacturers have mechanisms they can (and indeed must) place inside their creations and factories to mitigate the pollution/environmental damage they cause. Necromancers don't.

- When a given manufacturer breaks these rules, it's possible to trace the malfeasance back to them, because cars they make are required to be labeled with the creator's information and even the time and place of creation. Again, necromancers don't.

- If a given model of car is impossible to make safe, it is recalled/taken off the market completely and forbidden from being replicated. No such measures are possible with necromancy spells.

- There are powerful entities/organizations with a vested interest in making undeath as widespread and uncontrolled as possible (namely, gods/faiths that champion undeath in various D&D settings, such as Velsharoon, Nerull, Orcus, Urgathoa etc.) There is no such analogue for making cars as unsafe as possible.

- Civilizations that use cars know where the damage from the cars originates (i.e. the emissions of the cars themselves) and can structure society to contain that damage - natural preservations where driving is prohibited, green spaces in cities to absorb harmful gases, ongoing testing and disposal of older models etc.
Necromancers... you (hopefully) get the idea.

Troacctid

2020-09-28, 12:18 AM

Moreover, it's obviously not true that there's no way to mitigate the pollution of zombie production. You could make your zombies by sicking Mohrgs on outlying villages and having death priests wander around sweeping up the results with Rebuke Undead.
First off, by RAW, that does absolutely nothing to mitigate the pollution. Secondly, it's way more evil than just casting animate dead, because now in addition to creating undead, you're also murdering a bunch of random innocent people. So, not only does it not help, it's actively worse. Do you have any better ideas?

Psyren

2020-09-28, 12:26 AM

First off, by RAW, that does absolutely nothing to mitigate the pollution. Secondly, it's way more evil than just casting animate dead, because now in addition to creating undead, you're also murdering a bunch of random innocent people. So, not only does it not help, it's actively worse. Do you have any better ideas?

"Look how much more evil I COULD be doing!! Wouldn't it just be better for everyone concerned if you let me cast animate dead as much as I wanted instead? Honestly, I'm doing you all a favor here!" :smallamused:

Segev

2020-09-28, 08:04 AM

Even if one accepts claims about anthropogenic global warming happening and causing wildfires and hurricanes as being totally true, the justification for not simply banning all fossil fuels is the good that is done with their use.

So the analogy should be a question of how much good is done with the undead created.

For creating undead to be inherently evil, then, it must be true that so much harm is caused by the animation of even one skeleton that no amount of lives saved, no amount of happiness generated, no amount of wonderful, good, wholesome, uplifting virtuous results of the use that skeleton is put to could ever be worth it. The sorrow, pain, devastation, loss, and ruin of creating that one skeleton must always outweigh any boon it might have granted.

Remember, to use the “car” analogy, you have to assert that every time you start up your car, it is creating so much pollution that it is a morally-indefensible act. No matter what good you plan to do while it’s running. This is required because we’re using this to justify why animate dead is always evil.

This does start us down the tracks to a trolley problem, though.

Objective morality, also, for the record isn’t inherently arbitrary. Newton’s laws are objective, but are not arbitrary; they’re derived from the underlying truths of how matter and energy behave.

Expecting objective morality to have fundamental foundation beyond “because something said so” is not demanding subjective morality. Subjective morality is morality that can say the same exact act is good to one observer and evil to another, based on their moral codes. And if morality is subjective, neither moral code is automatically more correct than the other.

Objective morality would make one more correct than the other in the same way that objective reality makes the atomic model of matter more correct than the elemental model of matter. Not because some arbitrary text says “yeah, that’s the model to use,” but because that model more closely resembles reality.

Great Wheel cosmology establishing objective morality means that there are fundamental forces that drive or are driven by moral choices. And the outer planes operate on rules that reflect these moralities (and ethics).

Now, the writers of the setting could claim that eating with your left hand is an evil act because it empowers the lower planes, but that becomes arbitrary and unsatisfying. Which is my problem with animate dead being evil because of “evil pollution.” You may as well be saying “it empowers the Abyss.” Why? Because!

Psyren

2020-09-28, 08:15 AM

Remember, to use the “car” analogy, you have to assert that every time you start up your car, it is creating so much pollution that it is a morally-indefensible act. No matter what good you plan to do while it’s running. This is required because we’re using this to justify why animate dead is always evil.

The "car" is always on. It's impossible to turn off. Casting animate dead is manufacturing another always-on car, not turning an existing car on. And yes, I do believe making more polluting cars that can never be turned off is morally negative. ("Indefensible" is not the standard here - many evil acts can be defensible under some circumstances, that doesn't make those acts stop being evil.)

Segev

2020-09-28, 08:56 AM

The "car" is always on. It's impossible to turn off. Casting animate dead is manufacturing another always-on car, not turning an existing car on. And yes, I do believe making more polluting cars that can never be turned off is morally negative. ("Indefensible" is not the standard here - many evil acts can be defensible under some circumstances, that doesn't make those acts stop being evil.)

It’s only always on if you leave it intact and functional. If you build the always-on car for the purpose of one specific trip - perhaps to deliver life-saving medicine to a city where thousands of lives are in danger if they don’t get the medicine in a time frame that requires the car to get it there - and then disable/destroy it, it’s no different in terms of pollution than driving a regular car for it.

I’m sure you can see the analogy, but just to be complete: if you animate some undead for a particular good task and then destroy them, it’s analogous. And yet it’s evil to do so, no matter how good your purpose, nor how brief the polluting undead exist.

Which is another reason the pollution thing is silly: it depends on how long the undead last! As opposed to being an evil act because the act itself is evil.

ShurikVch

2020-09-28, 09:19 AM

Look there: there is Tyr (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Tyr) - LG God of Justice
Now tell me: would such god do a certainly-non-[Good] thing like creating constantly-world-polluting Undead?
No?
But he did it: Miltiades (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Miltiades) the Undead Paladin is Tyr's creation
Not so [Evil] after all?..

I already said it, but one more time: those who complaining about the world-destroying properties of regular Undead are ignoring all known counter-examples - such as Baelnorns (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Baelnorn_lich) of Myth Drannor (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Myth_Drannor), largely-neutral Dustmen (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Dustmen), or city of Hollowfaust (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Hollowfaust)

Also, I considering any references to Libris Mortis-exclusive content as dubious at best, because this book is:
Full of variant rules almost to the Unearthed Arcana degree
Poorly edited (Neutral example creature for always-Chaotic-Evil Gravetouched Ghoul template)

AnimeTheCat

2020-09-28, 09:20 AM

Undead and their creation has the [evil] descriptor on them or are usually some form of evil. These are not the only things in the game that are a thing without strong explanation behind the "why". In fact, simply due to undead and necromancers in general being considered evil in pop culture is a pretty simply "why". D&D thrives on a driving adversary for the players, most people tend towards good/neutral rather than evil, so having a mainstay of something to be the "bad guy" that is commonly considered by most people to be bad or evil is enough explanation for me.

If that's not for you though, Libris Mortis gives many examples of why undead can be in-universe considered evil. You've got the Atrocity Calls to Unlife theory, Negative Energy as a Supportive Force theory, Negative Energy as a Draining Force theory, Undeath as Contagion theory, and the Purposeful Reanimation theory. These exist as springboard ideas for you to just use, combine with each other, or adapt to make the most sense in your game. I think the point of the book is that there is not a singular reason for why the creation or summoning of undead is evil, but rather a combination of different reasons, perhaps differing due to cultures, practices, methodologies, etc.

In the Atrocity Calls to Unlife theory, it is specifically stated that an evil spirit powers the undead. If you're looking for a "why" that is just a catch all, there it is. The spirits that inhabit the corpse are either already evil or they are slowly corrupting a non-evil spirit in to being evil as the body converts from dead to undead.

In the Negative energy as a Supportive Force theory, it explains why the entity powered by negative energy would be evil, even though the energy itself is not inherently evil. It describes that negative energy suffuses undead, and this energy drives the hunger for consumption that all undead share, that is the drive to snuff out life. So while the negative energy is not bad, mindless undead, and even intelligent undead, are usually driven specifically to consume without remorse or without consideration for the target. Mindlessly killing innocents is an evil act, and these entities are driven to do so by the very energy that powers them.

In the Negative Energy as a Draining Force theory, you've got more support for the concept that negative energy, while not inherently evil, driving these entities is a net negative, an due to the fact that it drives these entities to conduct evil acts (wonton killing of innocents, creation of other evil entities, etc) on top of being a siphon of energy from the material to the negative energy plane (thus actively consuming and destroying the material plan without consideration) which all culminate in at the very least, the powered entity being considered irreversibly evil just due to it's very existence. The energy is not evil innately, but due to the effects it has on the thing it powers and what that thing does, the creature is evil.

Undeath as a Contagion discusses the fact that the way in which some undead reproduce is a mockery of the natural flow of life, and thus make this activity inherently evil, thus making those that perform it inherently evil.

Lastly, the Purposeful Reanimation theory explicitly discusses the difference between an undead and a flesh golem (zombie and flesh golem). The theory relies on the use or acceptance of two or more of the previous theories, that evil spirits are what inhabit undead, and they form a link/bond to the negative energy plane or are powered by negative energy. Since a flesh golem is not powered by negative energy, it does not have the same consumptive drive as something that is, thus if it goes uncontrolled, it will not default to consume. Second, it is not inhabited by an evil spirit, but an elemental spirit, again removing the innate drive to commit evil acts or preventing the spirit from slowly converting to evil as presented in the Atrocity Calls to Unlife theory.

If none of these are satisfactory to you, Libris Mortis basically gives you free reign to make up your own reason. What it doesn't do is remove the evil descriptors or the evil alignment from most undead. It's seeking to give explanations, or as it says in it's first paragraph of chapter one, "...attempts to ascertain the nature of undeath itself, presenting several theories concerning the energies that give rise to unlife."

Quertus

2020-09-28, 10:58 AM

So, as I read it, the Libris Mortis explanation basically admits, "no, D&D morality doesn't actually make any sense; please homebrew whatever answer works for your table for underlying reasons that could produce this illogical mess, where {X,y, z} are evil, but {p,q,r} are not".

So I return to my "darts at a dartboard" answer.

So. Can we get a list of the top 5-10 "this is evil?" And the top 5-10 "but this isn't?!"? (And, to remove any real-world stigma attached to those words, maybe we'll replace "evil" with "chicken"). I'll propose "animating the dead" as chicken, and creating golems as not chicken to start the lists.

Then, once we have the lists, we'll see if anyone can propose an algorithm with which an AI could parse actions into chicken and not chicken.

Lastly, if we all agree on the validity of the algorithm, we'll get a good laugh at what that would say about other things.

Sound like a plan?

Troacctid

2020-09-28, 12:51 PM

So, as I read it, the Libris Mortis explanation basically admits, "no, D&D morality doesn't actually make any sense; please homebrew whatever answer works for your table for underlying reasons that could produce this illogical mess, where {X,y, z} are evil, but {p,q,r} are not".
No, it's the exact opposite. It shows that not only does it make sense, but also that there are multiple alternative explanations that would also make sense.

Your claiming it doesn't make sense, for me, has the same energy as comedians saying they should just make the whole plane out of that stuff, or that the architect who put that improbable ventilation shaft in the Death Star should be fired. It's like a joke that's only funny if you don't understand the source material.

Efrate

2020-09-28, 12:51 PM

I do not agree with the flesh golem. It can go berserk in which it destroys what is nearest, including any sentient beings. If you except that that is not evil and is okay then how is a zombie or skeletons potential actions any different?

I know the RAW answer is because a developer wrote it so, or it's another sacred cow that wont die. A N entity can do evil acts, anyone can, but it is lacking in the capacity to differentiate. Animals consume to survive because of instinct, are undead (non intelligent) likewise motivated by instinct? I agree it doesnt make sense and is unsatisfactory and I dislike that even though I am certain the answer is actually cause developer X thought so without a lot of thought, like nearly every alignment based thing in 3.5. See also sanctify the wicked dominate person etc.

Unavenger

2020-09-28, 12:52 PM

May I also have permission to put this in my extended sig (in addition to your previous quote on this thread that I asked to put in my extended sig)?

Be my guest!

OGDojo

2020-09-28, 01:00 PM

Iirc creating undead adds negative energy to the world and disrupts the balance, so is universally evil, even if you use them for good, as the Greater Good demands you never make them. Don't have a source for that, but I do know that having undead and negative energy around empowers Attropus from Elder Evils and moves us closer to the apocalypse, so that's also a thing.

perhaps you can use this as an option to bring an elder evil into the world. storywise it would be like "the world has legalized Necromancy and corpse labor to help with tasks like mining and handling hazardous things. but in turn more Negative energy is being released and waking up Attropusm the elder evil and no one knows until he busts through the earth or descends from the clouds or rides in on a giant hippo (however he comes in) and begins WRECKING the world and causing chaos. it then falls to the adventurers to fight him off.

Doctor Despair

2020-09-28, 01:30 PM

Iirc, Attropus drifts through space and approaches in a super-telegraphed way. He basically appears as the moon from Majora's Mask

OGDojo

2020-09-28, 01:44 PM

Iirc, Attropus drifts through space and approaches in a super-telegraphed way. He basically appears as the moon from Majora's Mask

that would be so fun to do. lol

as your wandering the fields plowed by the undead you cast a cursory gaze upward and see that the moon is falling to earth.

ShurikVch

2020-09-28, 03:16 PM

...
I know it's not so much your own opinion as retelling of an article in Libris Mortis, but allow me to comment on it

In the Atrocity Calls to Unlife theory, it is specifically stated that an evil spirit powers the undead. If you're looking for a "why" that is just a catch all, there it is. The spirits that inhabit the corpse are either already evil or they are slowly corrupting a non-evil spirit in to being evil as the body converts from dead to undead.

In the Negative energy as a Supportive Force theory, it explains why the entity powered by negative energy would be evil, even though the energy itself is not inherently evil. It describes that negative energy suffuses undead, and this energy drives the hunger for consumption that all undead share, that is the drive to snuff out life. So while the negative energy is not bad, mindless undead, and even intelligent undead, are usually driven specifically to consume without remorse or without consideration for the target. Mindlessly killing innocents is an evil act, and these entities are driven to do so by the very energy that powers them.

In the Negative Energy as a Draining Force theory, you've got more support for the concept that negative energy, while not inherently evil, driving these entities is a net negative, an due to the fact that it drives these entities to conduct evil acts (wonton killing of innocents, creation of other evil entities, etc) on top of being a siphon of energy from the material to the negative energy plane (thus actively consuming and destroying the material plan without consideration) which all culminate in at the very least, the powered entity being considered irreversibly evil just due to it's very existence. The energy is not evil innately, but due to the effects it has on the thing it powers and what that thing does, the creature is evil.
None of that explain neither:
existence of Good Liches and Undead Paladins,
nor why Crypt Things and Gravecrawlers are "always Neutral",
nor - for that matter - why Entropic Creature template doesn't affects alignment (easily can be Entropic Paladin - +2 to Con and Cha is handy, and LA +2 isn't too crippling).

Heck, Xeg-Yi Energon is made of Negative Energy, but its alignment is "Always neutral", and neither summoning nor calling it to Material Plane count as [Evil] act

Lastly, the Purposeful Reanimation theory explicitly discusses the difference between an undead and a flesh golem (zombie and flesh golem). The theory relies on the use or acceptance of two or more of the previous theories, that evil spirits are what inhabit undead, and they form a link/bond to the negative energy plane or are powered by negative energy. Since a flesh golem is not powered by negative energy, it does not have the same consumptive drive as something that is, thus if it goes uncontrolled, it will not default to consume. Second, it is not inhabited by an evil spirit, but an elemental spirit, again removing the innate drive to commit evil acts or preventing the spirit from slowly converting to evil as presented in the Atrocity Calls to Unlife theory.
Actually, crafting of Flesh Golem required casting of Animate Dead, so I wouldn't be so sure about the "not powered by negative energy"; and its Berserk SA may do way more damage than extremely vague hazard of "Undead pollution"...

And speaking about that - Elder Evils have a couple of things to say there:

Restless Dead

“Too long have we reveled in our wickedness, too long have we sampled the forbidden—now the gods shun us, sealing the gates to heaven and leaving us lost among the dead.”

When this sign appears, the demarcation between life and death grows ever more blurry. After souls depart, their bodies stir in a wretched existence neither alive nor dead.
The sign of the restless dead first makes itself known by isolated occurrences of zombies and skeletons in the community. As it strengthens, the undead plague increases. Corpses pull themselves free from graves, slaughtering former friends and lovers and swelling their ranks until only the shuffling dead remain.
Effect: In the early stages of this sign, only a few of the dead spontaneously animate. Necromancy magic becomes more efficacious, while healing magic is suppressed. As the sign intensifies, more and more corpses rise, growing stronger all the while.
Details: Atropus (Chapter 2) is associated with this sign. See page 17 for more information.

Atropus's presence in the sky causes the dead to rise from their graves.
Faint: Necromancy spells and spell-like abilities are cast at +2 caster level. Whenever a living creature dies, a 20% chance exists that it will spontaneously rise as a zombie (MM 265) in 1d4 rounds.
Moderate: As faint, but the chance of spontaneous animation increases to 40%. In addition, the entire campaign setting is affected as if by a desecrate spell (PH 218). Casting consecrate removes this effect in the spell’s area until its duration expires.
Strong: As moderate, but the chance of spontaneous animation increases to 80%. Even creatures that died before this sign manifested begin to rise as skeletons or zombies, depending on the condition of their corpses. In addition, the campaign setting is affected as if by an unhallow spell (PH 297). Casting hallow removes this effect in the spell's area.
All conjuration (healing) spells and similar spell-like abilities are impeded, meaning that a caster must succeed on a Spellcraft check (DC 20 + the level of the spell) or lose the spell or spell slot without effect.
Overwhelming: As strong, but any creature that dies automatically rises as a zombie 1 round after death. Previously dead creatures automatically animate as skeletons or zombies. All undead creatures gain an extra 2 hit points per Hit Die. In addition, they gain turn resistance equal to one-quarter of their Hit Die total (1–7 HD grants +1 turn resistance, 8–15 HD grants +2, 16–23 HD grants +3, and so on). This bonus stacks with any turn resistance a creature already possesses.
THIS IS THE "UNDEAD POLLUTION"!..

Bohandas

2020-09-28, 03:27 PM

Heck, Xeg-Yi Energon is made of Negative Energy, but its alignment is "Always neutral", and neither summoning nor calling it to Material Plane count as [Evil] act

Not only made of negative energy but also specifically driven to negate positive beings (particularly its positive counterpart) as in the second theory

that it drives these entities to conduct evil acts (...creation of other evil entities, etc)

It should also be pointed out that this part of the second theory relies on circular reasoning.

EDIT:
Also, the first theory, the one about an evil spirit powering the undead, is a non-starter because then the undead would be vulnerable to Banishment and Protection from Evil

ShurikVch

2020-09-28, 03:48 PM

EDIT:
Also, the first theory, the one about an evil spirit powering the undead, is a non-starter because then the undead would be vulnerable to Banishment and Protection from Evil
And also because Incorporeal Undead exists: it's impossible to possess Incorporeal creatures, but Incorporeal Undead can be just as vicious as material ones...

Troacctid

2020-09-28, 03:58 PM

I know it's not so much your own opinion as retelling of an article in Libris Mortis, but allow me to comment on it

None of that explain neither:
existence of Good Liches and Undead Paladins,
nor why Crypt Things and Gravecrawlers are "always Neutral",
nor - for that matter - why Entropic Creature template doesn't affects alignment (easily can be Entropic Paladin - +2 to Con and Cha is handy, and LA +2 isn't too crippling).

Heck, Xeg-Yi Energon is made of Negative Energy, but its alignment is "Always neutral", and neither summoning nor calling it to Material Plane count as [Evil] act
I feel like the answer here is extremely obvious: negative energy has different effects when used in different ways, which is why some uses of it are evil and some are not. This was covered upthread, multiple times. It's also covered in the post you literally just quoted. There's no contradiction whatsoever.

ShurikVch

2020-09-28, 04:06 PM

Troacctid

2020-09-28, 04:25 PM

[citation needed]

No, seriously - quotes, please.
Because I read it, but don't seen where it was "covered"
So, may you highlight it or something?..
Here's a few. There are more.

That sounds like an argument people would make in-universe. The obvious counterargument is that all uses of negative energy don't need to be evil for animating the dead to be evil. Mabaran power can be channeled safely, and animate dead is unsafe. Like driving a car without an exhaust filter.

It's true that negative energy itself isn't evil - but neither is radioactive waste, and pouring it into a lake or meadow would still be an evil act.

Per Libris Mortis, negative energy makes it easier for uncontrolled undead to enter the world that the necromancer didn't intend. There are a vast quantity of undead creatures that can arise spontaneously from various circumstances, and LM/BoVD state that unchecked necromancy can mean more of them. Nobody knows exactly what makes some executed serial killers become Mohrgs while the others simply die off for example, but in nations where necromancy is widespread, you will get more of the former. Similarly, not all neglected children become Slaymates and not everyone who dies with unfinished business becomes a Ghost, but the ones that do likely do so due to some presence of "ambient" negative energy.

The spell has the evil descriptor, which has clearly defined mechanical effects. The undead it creates also have an evil alignment, which has mechanical effects as well. Seems like the mechanics are all neatly locked up. The more interesting question is, what kind of story do we want to tell? Why does it matter to the plot?

The [evil] descriptor is enough evidence that it is, therefore the burden of proof that it isn't is actually on you.

ShurikVch

2020-09-28, 05:01 PM

Here's a few. There are more.
So - very many arguments, but very very few facts...

About the [Evil] descriptor:
Deathwatch is [Evil];
Energy Drain is not;
guess which of them is able to create Undead?..

Quertus

2020-09-28, 05:17 PM

No, it's the exact opposite. It shows that not only does it make sense, but also that there are multiple alternative explanations that would also make sense.

Your claiming it doesn't make sense, for me, has the same energy as comedians saying they should just make the whole plane out of that stuff, or that the architect who put that improbable ventilation shaft in the Death Star should be fired. It's like a joke that's only funny if you don't understand the source material.

Are you claiming that every last one of the reasons given is RAW as *fact*, not as an *optional* explanation for why creating undead is evil? If so, that's not what I initially heard claimed, and that changes my response.

Still doesn't exactly leave us with a clear algorithm with which to evaluate D&D morality.

Actually, I reject those rules being universal. After all, one of them is, "draws Atropos". Unless Atropos is a canonically mandated part of every 3e setting, that *cannot* be a part of the universal heuristic of D&D morality.

In light of this, your stance is…?

Doctor Despair

2020-09-28, 05:25 PM

Are you claiming that every last one of the reasons given is RAW as *fact*, not as an *optional* explanation for why creating undead is evil? If so, that's not what I initially heard claimed, and that changes my response.

Still doesn't exactly leave us with a clear algorithm with which to evaluate D&D morality.

Actually, I reject those rules being universal. After all, one of them is, "draws Atropos". Unless Atropos is a canonically mandated part of every 3e setting, that *cannot* be a part of the universal heuristic of D&D morality.

In light of this, your stance is…?

Iirc Atropus created the gods, so if the setting has the standard gods, it has Atropus; of course, if we are using that as the justification, then a homebrew setting without Atropus should remove the Evil tag from negative energy/undead-related spells.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-28, 05:36 PM

I feel like the answer here is extremely obvious: negative energy has different effects when used in different ways, which is why some uses of it are evil and some are not. This was covered upthread, multiple times. It's also covered in the post you literally just quoted. There's no contradiction whatsoever.

If there are uses of negative energy that are not Evil, that is directly contradictory with Animate Dead being Evil because its use of negative energy causes pollution. If you can summon a being that is literally made of negative energy without causing problems, I fail to see how it is remotely possible that making something that is simply powered by negative energy would have to be Evil.

The RAW is simply incoherent. This (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=34248) is a more reasonable discussion of negative energy, but obviously not RAW (since the RAW doesn't make any sense).

Troacctid

2020-09-28, 05:41 PM

Are you claiming that every last one of the reasons given is RAW as *fact*, not as an *optional* explanation for why creating undead is evil? If so, that's not what I initially heard claimed, and that changes my response.

Still doesn't exactly leave us with a clear algorithm with which to evaluate D&D morality.

Actually, I reject those rules being universal. After all, one of them is, "draws Atropos". Unless Atropos is a canonically mandated part of every 3e setting, that *cannot* be a part of the universal heuristic of D&D morality.

In light of this, your stance is…?
I'm just saying, they clearly explained it. If, like Segev, you dislike the explanations, that's your prerogative, but don't pretend it was never explained at all.

So - very many arguments, but very very few facts...

About the [Evil] descriptor:
Deathwatch is [Evil];
Energy Drain is not;
guess which of them is able to create Undead?..
💁

Well, the skeleton itself is still causing pollution by existing (cf. evil alignment despite being mindless), even though the ritual to create it is cleaner, so it's not a perfect solution, but it's a step in the right direction.

Psyren

2020-09-28, 05:43 PM

I do not agree with the flesh golem. It can go berserk in which it destroys what is nearest, including any sentient beings. If you except that that is not evil and is okay then how is a zombie or skeletons potential actions any different?

If you made a Flesh Golem in the middle of a town square and left it alone there then yeah, that probably would be evil. The reason it's not universally evil is because the golem itself going crazy is only a danger to people nearby. Given its speed, abilities and intelligence (or more accurately, it's lack of all those things) you can reasonably figure out what surroundings would be dangerous to leave one in.

There is no way to make undead safer like that. Spontaneous ones can show up literally anywhere on the Material, anytime someone dies. There is no maximum radius listed, no guarantee of a convenient time, and above all, no way of knowing which undead you'll get due to your activities. The only safe and reasonable thing to do is to discourage the act entirely (at least among empathetic sapients), which the cosmos has done.

It’s only always on if you leave it intact and functional. If you build the always-on car for the purpose of one specific trip - perhaps to deliver life-saving medicine to a city where thousands of lives are in danger if they don’t get the medicine in a time frame that requires the car to get it there - and then disable/destroy it, it’s no different in terms of pollution than driving a regular car for it.

I’m sure you can see the analogy, but just to be complete: if you animate some undead for a particular good task and then destroy them, it’s analogous. And yet it’s evil to do so, no matter how good your purpose, nor how brief the polluting undead exist.

Of course it's still evil. This isn't Neverwinter Nights, you can't undo a murder by helping a thousand little old ladies cross the street. In D&D, evil acts stay evil even if you then do something good, and even if the two are related.

Second, both the creation of the undead and the casting of the spell to do so are evil acts (BoVD.) Smashing up your undead after they deliver insulin or whatever, even if it somehow cancelled out the former, does nothing to the latter. And smashing the undead doesn't magically clear up whatever pollution/seepage/residue/etc they put out while they were extant.

Third and final, what contrived excuse could possibly you have for making them that makes them the only option in that situation? There are other, and likely far more efficient/effective ways of "delivering life-saving medicine" for example, than sending it in the care of a rotting putrid corpse. Almost every situation where the pro-necromancy people say "don't you understand, I HAD to make horrid mockeries of the living to solve this problem" is similarly contrived.

Which is another reason the pollution thing is silly: it depends on how long the undead last! As opposed to being an evil act because the act itself is evil.

Got a source for it depending on how long the undead last?

Making them is an evil act, and so is casting [evil] spells to do it, as mentioned above.That's two evil acts every time an undead is animated. For all we know, the pollution put out in that moment could be analagous to the way energy from souls works in OotS - e.g. big burst at the moment of conversion, slower drip over time after that, as opposed to a constant flow from beginning to end.

ShurikVch

2020-09-28, 06:24 PM

💁
Well, the skeleton itself is still causing pollution by existing (cf. evil alignment despite being mindless), even though the ritual to create it is cleaner, so it's not a perfect solution, but it's a step in the right direction.
https://bigtonysfantasyleague.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/missed-the-point.png?resize=191%2C191

My point was: alignment in 3.5 is arbitrary and nonsensical: using a poison (non-lethal!) is more [Evil] than just stab 'em in the face, and actively draining their life force away is more [Evil] than ability to tell that someone is dying via Negative Energy...

Also:

My main gripe with the "Cosmological balance tilts" or "Pollution" or whatever arguments isn't that, and it's not that they're never actually represented mechanically and therefore it's hard to argue that they're actually relevant anyway. No, my main problem with them is that they're platitudinous coverups for a system that glorifies disproportionate posthumous retribution and stipulates a variety of moral tenets that now make even WotC themselves, who wrote the damn things, recoil in disgust.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-28, 06:34 PM

Unavenger's point is basically true. Even if you accept that D&D's conception of morality is coherent, the coherent standard it produces is monstrous by the moral standards of most people.

That said, I will quibble a little bit about specifically the "disproportionate posthumous retribution" thing. Certainly some sources are like that, but that's because the writers don't seem to understand how the cosmology they wrote up actually works and try to substitute their own cultural beliefs about the afterlife. In D&D, Hell isn't the place you go as a punishment for your sins. It's the place you go for rewards if you happen to have been on Team Sin in life. So in theory, the torture isn't a punishment for people who violated the tenets of the God of Love, but a reward for people who worship the God of Torture.

Troacctid

2020-09-28, 06:41 PM

https://bigtonysfantasyleague.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/missed-the-point.png?resize=191%2C191

My point was: alignment in 3.5 is arbitrary and nonsensical: using a poison (non-lethal!) is more [Evil] than just stab 'em in the face, and actively draining their life force away is more [Evil] than ability to tell that someone is dying via Negative Energy...
So? I agree that sleep poison being evil is nonsensical. But we're not talking about poison. We're talking about undead (and, to a lesser extent, spells with the evil descriptor), which, unlike poison, is a totally sensible thing to mark as evil.

ShurikVch

2020-09-28, 06:55 PM

So? I agree that sleep poison being evil is nonsensical. But we're not talking about poison. We're talking about undead (and, to a lesser extent, spells with the evil descriptor), which, unlike poison, is a totally sensible thing to mark as evil.
Gods (non-Evil gods!) created Undead (non-Evil Undead!)

Are you stipulating non-Evil gods do [Evil] things - just because Undead is Undead?

Segev

2020-09-28, 07:18 PM

Of course it's still evil. This isn't Neverwinter Nights, you can't undo a murder by helping a thousand little old ladies cross the street. In D&D, evil acts stay evil even if you then do something good, and even if the two are related.

Second, both the creation of the undead and the casting of the spell to do so are evil acts (BoVD.) Smashing up your undead after they deliver insulin or whatever, even if it somehow cancelled out the former, does nothing to the latter. And smashing the undead doesn't magically clear up whatever pollution/seepage/residue/etc they put out while they were extant.

Third and final, what contrived excuse could possibly you have for making them that makes them the only option in that situation? There are other, and likely far more efficient/effective ways of "delivering life-saving medicine" for example, than sending it in the care of a rotting putrid corpse. Almost every situation where the pro-necromancy people say "don't you understand, I HAD to make horrid mockeries of the living to solve this problem" is similarly contrived.You seem to me to be trying to have it both ways: it's the "undead pollution" that makes it evil, but bringing it into existence is the evil act, not having it hang around and do stuff while it generates that evil pollution by its very existence.

Got a source for it depending on how long the undead last?

Making them is an evil act, and so is casting [evil] spells to do it, as mentioned above.That's two evil acts every time an undead is animated. For all we know, the pollution put out in that moment could be analagous to the way energy from souls works in OotS - e.g. big burst at the moment of conversion, slower drip over time after that, as opposed to a constant flow from beginning to end.Okay, so your assertion is that "evil pollution" is done at the time of creation.

Well, then, no, it's a single solitary burst of it for each act of casting it, and that should be measurable and you should be able to determine if the harm that evil pollution is causing is worth the good you can do from having the undead around.

Just as we can judge that having cars to drive around creates more good in the world than the pollution they cause.

I was, perhaps, misled by the car analogy to assuming that, like a car, it's the running of the undead that causes the pollution in your model.

I still think "evil pollution" is a stupid model.

Don't get me wrong: I don't mind the notion of "evil auras" or even having them linger and manipulate the environment or subtly encourage evil things to happen. What I mind is the idea that there are acts which, without in any way absent this result being evil, result in evil aura happening.

"It's evil because it generates an evil aura" is, to me, like saying, "The vase hit the floor because it shattered," or, "He's a genius because Harvard gave him a scholarship." It's one thing for the effect to be evidence of the cause; it's another for the effect to cause the cause.

I don't mind it generating evil pollution if evil actions do that. I do mind that being the sole reason it's an evil action.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-28, 07:27 PM

So? I agree that sleep poison being evil is nonsensical. But we're not talking about poison. We're talking about undead (and, to a lesser extent, spells with the evil descriptor), which, unlike poison, is a totally sensible thing to mark as evil.

Once you've conceded that the alignment rules are nonsensical anywhere, you've lost. If we can't take the Evil tag as gospel because we don't want to bite the bullet on all surgeons everywhere being Evil for using anesthetic, we can't justify appealing to "the rules say it's Evil" for undead. So we have to look at the arguments, and those are pretty weaksauce.

The "it's bad to have dead things walking around" thing doesn't hold water because that's A) not universal and B) not consistent with the existence of the positive energy undead Eberron has, which are exactly like undead from this perspective.

The pollution argument is just terrible. It's not ever defined in the rules, so it can't be substantively engaged with. It's not consistent with how we treat pollution in the real world. It's not even consistent with the rest of the rules, because it is explicitly not an Evil act to summon creatures that are made of negative energy, or to create portals to the Negative Energy Plane, or to pump someone full of negative energy.

Unavenger

2020-09-28, 07:32 PM

Also, forgive me if I'm wrong, but fell animate inflict assorted wounds uses negative energy to raise undead, the same undead, and is... uh, non-aligned. Clearly, it's not the actual undead that are evil, so you basically have to argue the pollution angle - you know, the weird, inconsistent, ill-defined one - and that it is in fact the method of undead creation, not the undead creation itself, that's evil. It's a dumb situation no matter what.

Quertus

2020-09-28, 07:39 PM

Iirc Atropus created the gods, so if the setting has the standard gods, it has Atropus; of course, if we are using that as the justification, then a homebrew setting without Atropus should remove the Evil tag from negative energy/undead-related spells.

Well, that's something. Not sure about Eberon, or undead on the planes, or undead after Atropus is killed, or… you get the idea.

-----

I can accept "*some* uses of negative energy create pollution; *others* don't." I'm fine so far.

"Undead make pollution"? OK.

Creatures not just powered by but powered by *and made from* don't make pollution? This implies that it's not *being powered by*, but either an error in the *way* that they're being powered, or a particular interaction between "powered by negative energy" and "composed of (elemental) matter" that creates pollution.

If it were just an error in the construction technique? Well, I could see the first Wizard making a mistake, and everyone else just copying him. But Clerics? That would imply levels of incompetence even *I* don't usually ascribe to the gods. And spontaneous undead? No, something's fishy here.

And being powered by negative energy interacting with matter producing pollution? That only works if undead are made of matter. What of Ghosts, or Shadows? Are they made of matter?

So I'm still left with "darts at a dartboard", and "I've invented an animation spell which doesn't have those problems, done" as the extent of the underlying logic.

Psyren

2020-09-28, 07:41 PM

Okay, so your assertion is that "evil pollution" is done at the time of creation.

I'm saying it could be. In case my sig didn't make this abundantly clear, I like to work backwards from the facts/rules/world to justify ways they could make sense. And in this case, thanks to LM, it's not even particularly hard to do.

Well, then, no, it's a single solitary burst of it for each act of casting it, and that should be measurable and you should be able to determine if the harm that evil pollution is causing is worth the good you can do from having the undead around.

And that, Segev, is the part I still don't think you're getting.

"Act X, which always has evil results, can also potentially have good results under certain circumstances" is not a reason for Act X to not have an [Evil] tag. At best, it's maybe a reason for you, the person who has done or tries to do Act X routinely, to perhaps not go to an evil afterlife if your actions were truly justified and there was no viable alternative. But the tag on Act X remains and is supported by the metaphysical rules established by the cosmology.

Just as we can judge that having cars to drive around creates more good in the world than the pollution they cause.

I'm beginning to feel like a broken record pointing out the myriad ways the car analogy is flawed yet again, but here they are quickly - the harm of cars is possible to contain and mitigate, the downside is both gradual and quantifiable, rulebreakers can be traced and punished, no viable alternatives exist to cars in current society, etc.

Also, forgive me if I'm wrong, but fell animate inflict assorted wounds uses negative energy to raise undead, the same undead, and is... uh, non-aligned. Clearly, it's not the actual undead that are evil, so you basically have to argue the pollution angle - you know, the weird, inconsistent, ill-defined one - and that it is in fact the method of undead creation, not the undead creation itself, that's evil. It's a dumb situation no matter what.

What makes you think it isn't evil? Fell Animate is a feat, they usually don't get alignment descriptors. You are however creating undead, which is an evil act per BoVD pg. 8.

Bohandas

2020-09-28, 08:12 PM

My point was: alignment in 3.5 is arbitrary and nonsensical: using a poison (non-lethal!) is more [Evil] than just stab 'em in the face

Actually it's not according to the PHB

"Animals, traps, poisons, and other potential perils are not evil, and as such this spell does not detect them" -3.5e PHB pg.218

Unavenger

2020-09-28, 08:14 PM

Actually it's not according to the PHB

"Animals, traps, poisons, and other potential perils are not evil, and as such this spell does not detect them" -3.5e PHB pg.218

Poisons themselves are not evil, but using them is - although a specific exemption is called out for Drow Poison, I believe, as it deals no ability damage. This is in one of the alignment books, I think? I'm sure people more on the ball about this than I can dredge up the quotation on that one.

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-28, 08:19 PM

the harm of cars is possible to contain and mitigate, the downside is both gradual and quantifiable, rulebreakers can be traced and punished, no viable alternatives exist to cars in current society, etc.

All of those either apply to negative energy or don't apply to cars.

You can mitigate the impacts by using less brutal techniques for creating undead. You could also fund organizations to hunt down spontaneous undead. Frankly, if an adventuring necromancer has even one adventure where he saves a town from marauding zombies, he's net positive on loose undead for his whole career.

I would strongly contest that global warming is "quantifiable". The general consensus is that you can't attribute particular natural disasters to global warming, or accurately assess how much worse any particular disaster is because of it. And an increase in the number of undead is definitely gradual. It's not like at the 101st Animate Dead, the Sign of Atropus (or whatever the term for the thing from Elder Evils is) turns on.

You could establish Necromancy Emissions standards in the same way countries establish Carbon Emissions standards. In both cases it's an industrial process you can check for people doing and punish for doing wrong. In many ways it's easier to track necromancers, because you have access to the full suite of divination magic.

If the act was truly Evil, it wouldn't matter if there were no alternatives. If making cars required something we agreed was really Evil, like torturing someone to death, no one would say "well, we can't do better, guess we'll have to keep up the torture". And before you say that's unfair, you're the one who's insisting that this is Evil.

What makes you think it isn't evil? Fell Animate is a feat, they usually don't get alignment descriptors. You are however creating undead, which is an evil act per BoVD pg. 8.

You seem to be missing the point again. Yes, BoVD says it's Evil. But other sources say it isn't. You certainly could square that circle by declaring BoVD to be correct, but you could also square it by saying that BoVD is a general claim that is superseded by the specific non-Evil-ness of Fell Animate.

Moreover, you're still making the mistake of confusing what is essentially physics with morality.

Poisons themselves are not evil, but using them is - although a specific exemption is called out for Drow Poison, I believe, as it deals no ability damage. This is in one of the alignment books, I think? I'm sure people more on the ball about this than I can dredge up the quotation on that one.

It's in the Book of Exalted Deeds I believe. It calls out poison use as Evil, meaning every surgeon who's done life-saving surgery to someone under anesthetic and every park ranger who's sedated a dangerous animal for transport is Evil. Now, you can see in this thread that the people pushing book morality understand that that's insane, but you can't reject that and demand we keep the RAW treatment of undead. Either the alignment rules are rules, or they aren't.

Segev

2020-09-28, 09:19 PM

All of those either apply to negative energy or don't apply to cars.

You can mitigate the impacts by using less brutal techniques for creating undead. You could also fund organizations to hunt down spontaneous undead. Frankly, if an adventuring necromancer has even one adventure where he saves a town from marauding zombies, he's net positive on loose undead for his whole career.

I would strongly contest that global warming is "quantifiable". The general consensus is that you can't attribute particular natural disasters to global warming, or accurately assess how much worse any particular disaster is because of it. And an increase in the number of undead is definitely gradual. It's not like at the 101st Animate Dead, the Sign of Atropus (or whatever the term for the thing from Elder Evils is) turns on.

You could establish Necromancy Emissions standards in the same way countries establish Carbon Emissions standards. In both cases it's an industrial process you can check for people doing and punish for doing wrong. In many ways it's easier to track necromancers, because you have access to the full suite of divination magic.

If the act was truly Evil, it wouldn't matter if there were no alternatives. If making cars required something we agreed was really Evil, like torturing someone to death, no one would say "well, we can't do better, guess we'll have to keep up the torture". And before you say that's unfair, you're the one who's insisting that this is Evil.

You seem to be missing the point again. Yes, BoVD says it's Evil. But other sources say it isn't. You certainly could square that circle by declaring BoVD to be correct, but you could also square it by saying that BoVD is a general claim that is superseded by the specific non-Evil-ness of Fell Animate.

Moreover, you're still making the mistake of confusing what is essentially physics with morality.

It's in the Book of Exalted Deeds I believe. It calls out poison use as Evil, meaning every surgeon who's done life-saving surgery to someone under anesthetic and every park ranger who's sedated a dangerous animal for transport is Evil. Now, you can see in this thread that the people pushing book morality understand that that's insane, but you can't reject that and demand we keep the RAW treatment of undead. Either the alignment rules are rules, or they aren't.
All well-said. I just want to point out again that I don't mind animate dead being an evil spell to cast. I just want the reason it's evil to make sense (to me). Like I said, I don't even mind them doing the "evil pollution" thing, on reflection - I don't mind Evil Auras/miasma/whatever generating from strong evil or concentrations of evil. But I want that as an effect of doing real evil, not as an effect that MAKES something evil to do.

i.e., I'm okay with, "It creates evil miasma because it does something evil." I am not okay with, "It creates evil miasma and that makes it evil."

Psyren

2020-09-28, 10:46 PM

If the act was truly Evil, it wouldn't matter if there were no alternatives.

This I think is the core of the problem some of you are having; in D&D, there's a difference between an act being evil and being unjustifiable. Circumstances, especially extreme ones, can make an evil act the best solution to a given problem, and that is taken into account in D&D settings by the actor's alignment and, ultimately, the judgement they face when being assigned an afterlife.

Now granted, I do find most of the hypothetical scenarios presented where whipping up a skeleton is presented as the only solution to be paper-thin and contrived excuses to let a selfish necromancer do their thing unchallenged, but that doesn't mean such a scenario is totally impossible.

You can mitigate the impacts by using less brutal techniques for creating undead. You could also fund organizations to hunt down spontaneous undead. Frankly, if an adventuring necromancer has even one adventure where he saves a town from marauding zombies, he's net positive on loose undead for his whole career.

Only if he stops making undead after saving that town, and potentially not even then, depending on the damage he did (or is continuing to unrepentantly do.)

I would strongly contest that global warming is "quantifiable". The general consensus is that you can't attribute particular natural disasters to global warming, or accurately assess how much worse any particular disaster is because of it. And an increase in the number of undead is definitely gradual. It's not like at the 101st Animate Dead, the Sign of Atropus (or whatever the term for the thing from Elder Evils is) turns on.

While it's difficult to measure the true impact of something like pollution, a reasonable approximation is still possible. There's still only a given amount of pollutants that a single car can contribute to a given area over a given period of time. Cars can't create mass - the pollutants out will always correlate to the substances (e.g. fuel) put into them.

Negative energy has no such constraints. For the sake of charity, let's put aside the extreme (yet still possible) idea that just one more skeleton in your army means an Atropal shows up somewhere and threatens an unknowable mass of innocents. Even if your army of skeletons results in, say, just one extra Shadow or Wight - left unchecked, you can have actually caused throngs of them to come into being, because the limit of spawn-creating undead is usually just having living material to convert. Alternatively, it could cause that next cleric/monk who dies after breaking their vow to become a huecuva, and the presence of an intelligent spellcasting undead is far more dangerous to the world than passive pollutants.

You could establish Necromancy Emissions standards in the same way countries establish Carbon Emissions standards.

That sounds like a great goal for a campaign, and I hope you have fun at your table figuring out what those should be and researching necromancy magic that can fall within those boundaries. That doesn't mean that the default state of this (i.e. absent such standards) shouldn't be tagged evil.

You seem to be missing the point again. Yes, BoVD says it's Evil. But other sources say it isn't.

A source not saying anything one way or the other is not a refutation of another source saying it's evil.

It's in the Book of Exalted Deeds I believe. It calls out poison use as Evil, meaning every surgeon who's done life-saving surgery to someone under anesthetic and every park ranger who's sedated a dangerous animal for transport is Evil. Now, you can see in this thread that the people pushing book morality understand that that's insane, but you can't reject that and demand we keep the RAW treatment of undead. Either the alignment rules are rules, or they aren't.

Black and White Fallacy. We can disagree with poison's label because it is inadequately supported, while thinking the label on undead is much more robust. Furthermore, the book that says poison is evil is not actually the same book as the ones that say making undead is.

Quertus

2020-09-28, 10:54 PM

I'm just saying, they clearly explained it. If, like Segev, you dislike the explanations, that's your prerogative, but don't pretend it was never explained at all.

I'm pretty persistently AFB - can *anyone* give me a simple, binary answer to my question: were the reasons given in Libris Mortis intended as RAW (like the grappling rules, or "Fireball is a 3rd level Sorcerer/Wizard spell"), clearly meant to apply to all 3e unless the GM is house ruling, or was it given as *optional* content (like milestone XP or gestalt) or campaign-specific content (like Kryn has 3 moons, or what cities / NPCs / gods are present in any given world), that *isn't* expected to be "true for all 3e content unless otherwise noted".

Whether or not I "like" the explanation comes second to the nature of whether all worlds are on the backs of giant turtles, or whether that's one *possible* explanation for how celestial objects move.

SangoProduction

2020-09-29, 05:26 AM

It is absolutely amazing (and not sarcastically) that a thread can go on for 8 pages based solely on a single tangential complaint about an [Evil] tag on a spell.

I would have expected things to veer off once again by 8 pages, but no, they are remarkably consistent. lol. Across like a week. I've never seen any sort of interaction remain on topic for a fraction as long as this thread has. And it's amazing.

Asmotherion

2020-09-29, 06:21 AM

Only if negative energy and death (no matter the cause) are inherently evil. Which they aren't.

Likewise, healing should be evil for tipping the balance (and summoning the Jenova expy Elder Evil). Which it isn't.

Negative energy is, by definition, very much evil. If that was not enough, it is stated across multiple sources.

Also, if you're looking for mechanical reason, all spells that animate dead have the Evil tag.

For a more lore-wise explaination:

A) Negative Energy is inherently Evil. It needs evil intent to attune to it and channel it.

B) You are, knowingly and of your own free will, creating something whose very nature is to harm and destroy life. Even if you want to put it to good use (which, could be a balancing factor), it's still an evil act.

C) Necromancy uses magic to suppress the free will of the undead to make them do your bidding. Slavery is an act of Evil (As per Book of Vile Darkness).

D) Finally, Animation Necromancy not only shows disrespect to the Dead, it also prevents them from being resurected (at least by more common spells). And, to be honest, even if a non-necromancer used your ancestor's bones or dead body for anything, especially without your permission, you'd probably be pretty mad at them.

So, a necromancer who would animate some skeletons in order to have them farm to provide free food for the poor, is still an evil guy, who may have some good intentions, or at the very least a Neutral guy with evil tendencies.

In a nutshell, most evil people are neither complete sociopaths, nor of the "stereotypical cartoon evil" type. They are people, who may have some good intentions, but often cross the line of "the ends justify the means".

hamishspence

2020-09-29, 06:51 AM

Negative energy is, by definition, very much evil. If that was not enough, it is stated across multiple sources.
Some negative energy spells lack the [Evil] tag. The Inflict X Wounds series, for example.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/inflictLightWounds.htm

Only an evil, or "shady Neutral" cleric can spontaneously convert any spell into an Inflict X Wounds spell of the appropriate level:

Spontaneous Casting
A good cleric (or a neutral cleric of a good deity) can channel stored spell energy into healing spells that the cleric did not prepare ahead of time. The cleric can "lose" any prepared spell that is not a domain spell in order to cast any cure spell of the same spell level or lower (a cure spell is any spell with "cure" in its name).

An evil cleric (or a neutral cleric of an evil deity), can’t convert prepared spells to cure spells but can convert them to inflict spells (an inflict spell is one with "inflict" in its name).

A cleric who is neither good nor evil and whose deity is neither good nor evil can convert spells to either cure spells or inflict spells (player’s choice). Once the player makes this choice, it cannot be reversed. This choice also determines whether the cleric turns or commands undead.

but casting the spell itself, is not evil, even if Rebuking/Commanding Undead (as opposed to Turning them) is:

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.

The Negative Energy Plane itself, lacks the Evil tag:

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/planes.htm#negativeEnergyPlane

a Good being does not get the same penalties for being there, that they would get from visiting one of the deeper Lower Planes:

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/planes.htm#goodAlignedEvilAligned

There's certainly a connection between Negative Energy and evil - but it's not as straightforward as "The energy simply is evil".

NigelWalmsley

2020-09-29, 07:18 AM

This I think is the core of the problem some of you are having; in D&D, there's a difference between an act being evil and being unjustifiable.

I think the problem you're having is that you've backed yourself into a corner based on alignment rules that are incoherent and are making a distinction without a difference.

Only if he stops making undead after saving that town, and potentially not even then, depending on the damage he did (or is continuing to unrepentantly do.)

No. If you were willing to take the absolutist stance on pollution, maybe you'd have a case. But you accept that there are balancing tests based on utility. That means that if he kills more spontaneous undead than his animation causes, he's making a net-positive impact. Since we don't actually know how many spontaneous undead his actions cause, I am going to claim that it's less than one adventure's worth, and there's no argument you can make against me.

A source not saying anything one way or the other is not a refutation of another source saying it's evil.

A source not giving it the Evil tag is a refutation of it being Evil. Otherwise any action has the potential to retroactively become Evil when a new book is printed (or when someone buys an existing book that says "actually all Fire magic is Evil").

We can disagree with poison's label because it is inadequately supported, while thinking the label on undead is much more robust.

You can think that. But unless you're willing to accept the things the books say generally, you can't use "book says it" as an argument. You can agree with the other arguments it makes, but the only authority those arguments have is Psyren's, not the rules. So you have to be more convincing than just "look it says Evil".

Negative energy is, by definition, very much evil. If that was not enough, it is stated across multiple sources.

Except the Negative Energy Plane isn't Evil-aligned. Nor are the creatures that are made of negative energy. There are certainly multiple sources pushing the Crawling Darkness view, but there are also multiple sources pushing the Playing With Fire one.

Efrate

2020-09-29, 07:22 AM

Taking a non intelligent undeads free will is not evil, they do not have the capacity to make a choice meaning they have no free will. They run on instinct. Is hunting something for food evil? A wolf hunts and kills a deer, but that isn't evil. It's not murder because that requires a conscious effort, which they lack. The blurb about hating the living is unsupportable by their lack of intelligence.

Dominate and charm are not evil. Sanctify the wicked is [Good], exalted good. Can a non intelligent undead be a slave? Can a dog? Or golem?

Ashtagon

2020-09-29, 08:30 AM

My take on it...

Creating "mindless" undead is essentially an evil act, because that undead-animating force causes continuing torture on the soul that was once linked to the body. It doesn't take that soul away from its afterlife or bind it in any way, but does cause it pain.

And torture is evil, right?

In contrast, using animate object on the skeleton is just in bad taste, but not actually evil, because doing so doesn't torture the soul.

I suppose if you were to somehow create undead from a body that either never housed a soul or does not even nominally have planar access to the resting place of the soul associated with it, then you're good to go. But for most planes, that is quite a corner case.

hamishspence

2020-09-29, 08:36 AM

Even if negative energy itself is not evil, there are so many ties between Negative Energy and Evil, that it says something about the way the universe is set up. At least in 3.5.

Evil clerics, even Evil clerics of Neutral deities, always get Rebuke Undead (and Cast Inflict Spells Spontaneously).

Undead always detect as Evil, using the Detect Evil spell, even if their alignment is Neutral or Good (because the Detect Evil spell has an Undead line, not an Evil Undead line).

Many undead have "always (X) Evil" in their alignment line.

Gods with the Undeath domain are pretty much always Evil.

Hades, Plane of Neutral Evil, has Negative Dominant areas (as I recall, at least).

Psyren

2020-09-29, 08:37 AM

I think the problem you're having is that you've backed yourself into a corner based on alignment rules that are incoherent and are making a distinction without a difference.

I'm not in a corner at all. Not only are the rules clear, the rationale behind making them that way is also clear.

I am going to claim that it's less than one adventure's worth, and there's no argument you can make against me.

As I've said, if that's how your table wants to rule it go nuts. By RAW it's still evil.

A source not giving it the Evil tag is a refutation of it being Evil.

Feats don't get descriptors like that, try again.

You can think that. But unless you're willing to accept the things the books say generally, you can't use "book says it" as an argument.

Sure I can, and there's no argument you can make against me :smallamused:

Less facetiously, even if I agreed with you that the poison rule is somehow a reason to set my whole book on fire (it's not), it's not even in the same book.

Unavenger

2020-09-29, 08:47 AM

Feats don't get descriptors like that, try again.

Nothing says they can't give a descriptor, as Energy Admixture does, and not giving the spell the [evil] descriptor is a tacit admission that the spell is not evil. His try was perfectly valid the first time. The source does not give it, the fell animated spell, the [evil] descriptor, which is an admission that the spell is not an evil one. Acid spells have the acid descriptor and evil ones the evil descriptor.

Psyren

2020-09-29, 09:05 AM

Nothing says they can't give a descriptor, as Energy Admixture does, and not giving the spell the [evil] descriptor is a tacit admission that the spell is not evil.

Not how RAW works.

Rule A says doing X is evil.
Rule B (the feat that allows certain spells to do X) is silent, saying nothing on the subject.

There is no contradiction to A, so A stands. Even if there were such a contradiction, then you'd have to consider whether A or B was the primary source or a specific exception to resolve that contradiction.

You might argue that it would be cleaner or more elegant if B repeated or reinforced A, but it's not required for A to still exist.

137beth

2020-09-29, 09:10 AM

Unavenger

2020-09-29, 09:19 AM

Not how RAW works.

Rule A says doing X is evil.
Rule B (the feat that allows certain spells to do X) is silent, saying nothing on the subject.

There is no contradiction to A, so A stands. Even if there were such a contradiction, then you'd have to consider whether A or B was the primary source or a specific exception to resolve that contradiction.

You might argue that it would be cleaner or more elegant if B repeated or reinforced A, but it's not required for A to still exist.

Fine, you then end up with a spell which is always evil but never [evil] and no specification of what specifically that means.

Because I have no particular side in this fight though, maintaining as I do that the whole thing is rather silly...

Humans, simply by living, constantly release pollution (CO2). And humans can only be sustained by consuming the corpses of other living beings (unlike undead, who don't need to eat).

...I should point out that it's a somewhat animal-centric view that carbon dioxide is the pollution, and not oxygen, and the plants might argue the opposite if we could hear their sides of the argument. Referring to dead plants as the corpses of other living beings is also somewhat melodramatic, and I am fully prepared to accept "Eating animals is unethical" as a conclusion while not accepting "Eating plants is unethical", so if you have human-eating or even cow-eating zombies then you can easily argue that they are worse than at least some humans.

Psyren

2020-09-29, 09:20 AM

Also, as to the whole "undead cause harm by existing" thing...

Humans, simply by living, constantly release pollution (CO2). And humans can only be sustained by consuming the corpses of other living beings (unlike undead, who don't need to eat).

If either of those factors make undead evil, then humans are inherently evil and creating humans is also inherently evil.

There are living creatures that need CO2 to survive (e.g. plants.) It thus serves a purpose on the material.

Remind me, which ones need negative energy or spontaneous undead? :smallconfused:

Quertus

2020-09-29, 09:33 AM

No. If you were willing to take the absolutist stance on pollution, maybe you'd have a case. But you accept that there are balancing tests based on utility. That means that if he kills more spontaneous undead than his animation causes, he's making a net-positive impact. Since we don't actually know how many spontaneous undead his actions cause, I am going to claim that it's less than one adventure's worth, and there's no argument you can make against me.

I think Atropos puts that number a little higher… otherwise, yeah, based on existing numbers, very few Necromancers should be able to tip the balance that much.

Doesn't save those who died from the spontaneous undead for which they are actually responsible, however, any more than those deaths an omniscient being could attribute to the pollution caused by my car.

I'm not in a corner at all. Not only are the rules clear, the rationale behind making them that way is also clear.

Have I missed this? Was this "clear rationale" posted at some point?

Also, as to the whole "undead cause harm by existing" thing...

Humans, simply by living, constantly release pollution (CO2). And humans can only be sustained by consuming the corpses of other living beings (unlike undead, who don't need to eat).

If either of those factors make undead evil, then humans are inherently evil and creating humans is also inherently evil.

Well of course making humans is evil - humans are simply the larval state of (most) undead. If making undead is evil, them off course enabling them is also evil.

hamishspence

2020-09-29, 10:28 AM

Fine, you then end up with a spell which is always evil but never [evil] and no specification of what specifically that means.

I'd say most of BOVD's "X is evil" things are general rules of thumb rather than hard-and-fast mechanical things.

Betrayal, as a general rule of thumb, is evil - but betraying Villains for extremely good reasons, may not be.

Similarly, creating undead, as a general rule of thumb, is evil, but it may not always be, in specific cases. Creating an Archlich, or a Baelnorn, for example. Still, these are very much edge cases.

Using Fell Animate on a spell that doesn't already have the [Evil] tag, won't give it the evil tag - but the act itself can still qualify as Evil. A multiclass Paladin/Wizard who takes the feat, and uses its ability to create zombies, should Fall.

Energy Drain doesn't have the [Evil] tag - but if you energy drain something to death, and abandon the corpse instead of destroying it, it will rise as a wight. A Paladin/Wizard who doesn't take the steps to prevent the wights from coming into being, should Fall.

And so on.

Segev

2020-09-29, 10:31 AM

There are living creatures that need CO2 to survive (e.g. plants.) It thus serves a purpose on the material.

Remind me, which ones need negative energy or spontaneous undead? :smallconfused:

Why, undead need it.

I could construct an argument that plants are "evil" because they need CO2 to exist, and they consume and destroy if allowed to grow out of control, but that they're a necessary evil because they keep (good) animals alive. I could also construct a setting where undead labor is so integral that it is impossible to disentangle it from living society in the same way it's impossible to disentangle plant life from animal life.

And I'm not even trying to argue that creating undead shouldn't be evil! (Just that saying "it's evil because it creates evil aura/energy/whatever" is like saying "he doesn't eat food because he's starving.")

hamishspence

2020-09-29, 10:47 AM

Regarding Rebuke/Command Undead attempts - with enough punch behind them, they can animate the dead:

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#zoneOfAnimation

so it makes sense that they partake of the same moral nature that Animate Dead does - it's the same power, just not in the form that the spell takes.

Psyren

2020-09-29, 12:05 PM

Why, undead need it.

They're not living creatures, by definition.

Using Fell Animate on a spell that doesn't already have the [Evil] tag, won't give it the evil tag - but the act itself can still qualify as Evil. A multiclass Paladin/Wizard who takes the feat, and uses its ability to create zombies, should Fall.

Energy Drain doesn't have the [Evil] tag - but if you energy drain something to death, and abandon the corpse instead of destroying it, it will rise as a wight. A Paladin/Wizard who doesn't take the steps to prevent the wights from coming into being, should Fall.

And so on.

Precisely.

Have I missed this? Was this "clear rationale" posted at some point?

As with all "this is an evil act" throughout D&D's history, the ultimate goal in gameplay terms is to discourage these acts as default strategies for (presumably heroic) players. Again, this is not to say that a "heroic necromancer" concept is completely impossible, any more than it's impossible to be a heroic assassin or a heroic slavemaster or a heroic crime boss, but you will likely have to work harder and/or likely have to be faced with much more extreme circumstances than the average adventurer. And again, that doesn't mean your default tactics aren't evil, just (potentially) justified, especially if viable alternatives are slim.

Kalkra

2020-09-29, 02:04 PM

Well, I'm very late to this party, and just spent two hours reading this entire thread, and now I have a lot to respond to.

Before getting into the meat and potatoes of it, I want to point out that mummies were not at all evil monsters prior to the 1932 movie, but rather they were usually love interests for the main character. Just something I found interesting.

I'll also say that I don't like the whole, try to make up reasons for the rules to make sense thing. Sorry Psyren. I mean, I'm okay with a little of it, but at a certain point, it just reminds me of conversations I've had where people try to explain to me all the rules that Genie in Aladdin had that he explained off-camera in order to explain why people didn't just wish for various things which would have greatly changed the movie. I mean, plot holes are plot holes, and that's fine. Poems can be made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree. In other words, nobody can make an entire world which is internally consistent, and I don't think we need to try to make it so, as any such attempt is ultimately doomed to failure. I mean, this is especially true in DnD, where there are so many things that can only be explained by the constant intervention of some sort of overdeity, or by the DM.

Anyway, it seems to me like there's a lot of different stuff flying around, so I'll try to address all of it in no particular order:

First, Evil vs. evil. Casting enough spells with the [Evil] tag turns you evil. In other words, if you cast Deathwatch too many times, you start wanting to murder puppies. Before y'alls start saying that there are different kinds of evil, the puppies thing was a joke, sorta. More accurately, casting Deathwatch makes you evil in some way, which necessarily stops you from being good. You may not want to murder puppies specifically, but you can't be a good person, as defined by DnD rules, and you probably need to do at least one of the things that characterizes evil, as defined by DnD. More on that in a bit. Also, you'll go to hell when you die, and your soul will be tortured and destroyed. Or turned into a fiend, which may or may not count as destruction. Ship of Theseus, etc.

Second, morality in DnD is stupid. I think everyone agrees on this point. This and the previous point are probably why there are a lot of people who are viewing Good and Evil as more forms of energy than merely morality. In other words, if Evil quantifiably exists, but isn't always evil, it must just be a force of nature. Now I don't think this is the greatest argument, but I don't have any alternative for what Good and Evil are, if not some forms of cosmic energy, which is why I don't like Evil being stronger than Good. It just feels like Fire being stronger than Water, or some such. I don't particularly like the arguments about entropy and creation being harder than destruction for two reasons. The first is that Evil isn't necessarily destruction, nor is Good necessarily creation. I mean, I could create an automated system that breed animals and then tortures them to death, and some hero could come along and destroy it much more easily than I created it. With regards to entropy, magic exists, and it doesn't follow the laws of thermodynamics. If the sun is gonna burn out, there are plenty of spells you can use to fix it. Sure magic that promotes entropy has an advantage over magic that opposes it, but that seems fairly negligible compared to how much more powerful Evil is mechanically than Good.

Third, I don't know how or why most undead are always evil. I mean, if it's because they always attack people, as per Libre Mortis, then animals and oozes and the like should also be evil. If it's because they're always animated and controlled by evil people, then they should stop being evil if they're uncontrolled. If it's because they cause pollution, then that means that being a danger to others makes you evil, which has all kinds of problems. This is another reason to differentiate Evil from evil. If Evil is just some sort of energy which inhabits undead, and also unrelatedly inhabits serial killers, then it makes sense, although very little else does. This would also explain the whole Planar Binding thing. I still don't like it, though. I'd like to think that all the Evil people are actually evil, and if I cast Detect Evil on somebody, I can kill them without needing to worry about it.

Third, I don't find the Eberron pollution thing to be satisfying explanation for why Animate Dead has the [Evil] outside of Eberron, just like you couldn't use Athasian defiling to explain it. That being said, even in Eberron I don't necessarily agree that it should be objectively evil. I mean, the argument seems to be that casting Animate Dead, as well as the existence or undead in general, releases some sort of energy which damages the local area, and also causes more uncontrolled undead, who will then go and attack people. The argument is that even if you can counteract these effects with specific other spells, the fact that the spell itself causes something bad makes it Evil. Now, there was a reference to spells that fix this pollution early on, but then they weren't mentioned again, and even after looking briefly through the Eberron Campain Setting I couldn't find any of this, so I'm just kinda guessing about stuff here. If somebody could tell me where all this stuff is, that would be nice. Anyway, if any spell that always causes something bad is Evil, even if that bad thing can be fixed, then that implies that surgery is Evil, because you cut people open, even if you stitch them back together. Even if there are no spells that repair, remove, or mitigate the effects of this pollution, as long as such a spell could be researched, the problem still stands, because Animate Dead won't suddenly lose its [Evil] tag once an anti-pollutant is developed.

Fourthly, as I saw somebody point out, Animate Dead is still Evil if cast on some Evil-aligned plane where presumably the pollution wouldn't actually make a difference, nor would it be Evil to pollute an area occupied entirely be Evil individuals.

Fifthly, the car thing. Casting Summon Undead I at CL 1 brings an undead into existence for one round. It would be very difficult to claim that the effects of casting that spell would be more damaging than people using cars, and yet Summon Undead is Evil. More to the point, the counterargument to the car thing I saw was twofold: firstly, people try not to pollute so much, and secondly cars are necessary. In other words, cars aren't Evil only if they pollute as little as possible. I don't find this argument to be compelling for a few reasons. First of all, cars aren't necessary. I mean sure, there are plenty of things we use cars for that we couldn't accomplish without cars, but those things aren't necessary. Furthermore, as technology improves, cars pollute have the capacity to achieve the same results while polluting less. However, if you say that all the people who used old cars weren't Evil because they didn't have access to better cars, you're kinda ignoring the objective nature of Evil. If you're about to die, and you find some scrolls of Summon Undead which could save you, using them will still turn you Evil. (I'm assuming that the whole thing with casting Evil spells turning you Evil also works with scrolls. If not, choose a different example. It doesn't matter The point is, there are times when certain things could only be accomplished by casting Evil spells, and you're still going to hell for doing them.) If there was something which could only be accomplished by murdering babies, that wouldn't be a reason to do it. Admittedly, cars exist in the real world, and we're talking about DnD morality here. Maybe cars all have the [Evil] tag in DnD-land, (ignoring D20 Modern and the like), so even if I were to prove that cars are Evil, that doesn't prove that they're evil, so it's kinda a moot point.

Sixthly, regarding all other explanations of why Animate Dead is [Evil], such as affecting the soul and whatnot, I'm not gonna address them individually, because they fail to explain any other spell, such as the aforementioned Deathwatch or Summon Undead, and if you need to make up something for each of them, then it's kinda meaningless.

Seventhly, and lastly, regarding non-[Evil] spells that produce undead, I don't really see any way around that without saying that mechanically they act as though they have the [Evil] tag, even though they don't, and that's problematic. I mean, if a spell doesn't say that casting it turns you Evil, casting it shouldn't turn you Evil any more than casting Fireball at somebody should turn you evil. Certainly if a person is unaware of the long-term global impact of casting a spell, casting it shouldn't turn him Evil unless the spell has the [Evil] tag, which evidently means that it has some sort of built-in alignment changing effect.

hamishspence

2020-09-29, 02:17 PM

I'd like to think that all the Evil people are actually evil, and if I cast Detect Evil on somebody, I can kill them without needing to worry about it.

I prefer the "you do need to worry about it" approach. Killing an evil person just because they detect as evil, is likely to be considered murder, in most jurisdictions. Plus, plenty of evil people, may not "deserve killing".

Eberron in particular, takes that approach.

Also, from Quintessential Paladin 2 (third party, 3.5ed):

Good, Neutral, and Evil humans occurring with roughly equal frequency,

Low Grade Evil Everywhere
In some campaigns, the common population is split roughly evenly among the various alignments - the kindly old grandmother who gives boiled sweets to children is Neutral Good and that charming rake down the pub is Chaotic Neutral. Similarly the thug lurking in the alleyway is Chaotic Evil, while the grasping landlord who throws granny out on the street because she's a copper behind on the rent is Lawful Evil.

In such a campaign up to a third of the population will detect as Evil to the paladin. This low grade Evil is a fact of life, and is not something the paladin can defeat. Certainly he should not draw his greatsword and chop the landlord in twain just because he has a mildly tainted aura. It might be appropriate for the paladin to use Diplomacy (or Intimidation) to steer the landlord toward the path of good but stronger action is not warranted.

In such a campaign detect evil cannot be used to infallibly detect villainy, as many people are a little bit evil. if he casts detect evil on a crowded street, about a third of the population will detect as faintly evil.
Neutral being significantly commoner than the others,

Evil As A Choice
A similar campaign set-up posits that most people are some variety of Neutral. The old granny might do good by being kind to people, but this is a far cry from capital-G Good, which implies a level of dedication, fervour and sacrifice which she does not possess. If on the other hand our granny brewed alchemical healing potions into those boiled sweets or took in and sheltered orphans and strays off the street, then she might qualify as truly Good.

Similarly, minor acts of cruelty and malice are not truly Evil on the cosmic scale. Our greedy and grasping landlord might be nasty and mean, but sending the bailiffs round to throw granny out might not qualify as Evil (although if granny is being thrown out into a chill winter or torrential storm, then that is tantamount to murder and would be Evil). In such a campaign, only significant acts of good or evil can tip a character from Neutrality to being truly Good or Evil.

if a paladin in this campaign uses detect evil on a crowded street, he will usually detect nothing, as true evil is rare. Anyone who detects as Evil, even faintly Evil, is probably a criminal, a terrible and wilful sinner, or both. Still, the paladin is not obligated to take action - in this campaign, detecting that someone is Evil is a warning, not a call to arms. The paladin should probably investigate this person and see if they pose a danger to the common folk, but he cannot automatically assume that this particular Evil person deserves to be dealt with immediately
Evil and Good are so rare as to be supernaturally associated- even serial killers are not Evil aligned (for Detection purposes) unless they're doing it as part of devotion to a fiend or evil deity.

Evil As A Supernatural Taint
Another alternative is that Evil is essentially a supernatural quality, a spiritual taint that comes only from dark powers. Merely human evil would not be detected by the paladin's power - only monsters, undead, outsiders, and those who traffic with dark powers are Evil on this scale.

A murderer who kills randomly would be evil on the human scale, but the paladin's senses operate on a divine level. However, if this murderer were killing as part of a sacrificial ritual to summon a demon, then his evil would be supernatural in nature and therefore detectable by the paladin.

In this campaign, a positive result on detect evil means that the paladin should immediately take action. This is a morally black-and-white set-up - anyone who is Evil should be investigated or even attacked immediately.

The first two are both compatible with RAW. The third, is very much homebrew.

Kalkra

2020-09-29, 02:28 PM

I prefer the "you do need to worry about it" approach. Killing an evil person just because they detect as evil, is likely to be considered murder, in most jurisdictions. Plus, plenty of evil people, may not "deserve killing".

Eberron in particular, takes that approach.

Also, from Quintessential Paladin 2 (third party, 3.5ed):

Good, Neutral, and Evil humans occurring with roughly equal frequency,

Neutral being significantly commoner than the others,

Evil and Good are so rare as to be supernaturally associated- even serial killers are not Evil aligned (for Detection purposes) unless they're doing it as part of devotion to a fiend or evil deity.

The first two are both compatible with RAW. The third, is very much homebrew.

First of all, I'm trying to avoid 3rd party stuff, because that doesn't really speak to WoTC's philosophy, and also because there's so much stuff that contradicts, and there's enough of that with splatbooks.

Also, the reason I prefer to think that Evil people are evil and vice-versa is because of the interaction with the whole afterlife thing, which I touched on briefly, but didn't get into fully, because I really don't like it. In other words, if you can have someone who's evil but not Evil, does he go to heaven? What about those who are Evil but not evil? That being said, in general the whole afterlife system in DnD is really bad at getting anybody to do anything, and there are just a ton of things I really dislike about it, and it's one of those areas I need to suspend disbelief for anyway.

hamishspence

2020-09-29, 02:43 PM

First of all, I'm trying to avoid 3rd party stuff, because that doesn't really speak to WoTC's philosophy, and also because there's so much stuff that contradicts, and there's enough of that with splatbooks.

Also, the reason I prefer to think that Evil people are evil and vice-versa is because of the interaction with the whole afterlife thing, which I touched on briefly, but didn't get into fully, because I really don't like it. In other words, if you can have someone who's evil but not Evil, does he go to heaven? What about those who are Evil but not evil?
Yes, "mildly evil" people will go to the Lower Planes. Yes, their souls don't really deserve to be tortured like that. That may be one reason why certain Good characters are keen to redeem evil ones, rather than just execute them.

Even if you stick to WOTC material, from Eberron Campaign Guide:

"In a world where characters have access to magic such as detect evil, it's important to keep in mind that evil people are not always killers, criminals, or demon worshippers. They mights be selfish and cruel, always putting their interests above those of others, but they don't necessarily deserve to be attacked by adventurers. The self-centered advocate is lawful evil, for example, and the cruel innkeeper is neutral evil."

And from WOTC's Dragonshards articles:

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20041122a

"In a crowd of ten commoners, odds are good that three will be evil. But that doesn't mean they are monsters or even killers -- each is just a greedy, selfish person who willingly watches others suffer. The sword is no answer here; the paladin is charged to protect these people. Oratory, virtue, and inspiration are the weapons of the paladin -- though intimidation may have its place."