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Sstoopidtallkid
2008-04-04, 10:42 PM
I've always wondered why, exactly, every single Lich out there has to be evil. Intrinsically evil to the point where WotC (inventors of the LG Succubus Paladin) decided to create a good Lich, they had to create it as an entirely separate class of monster. What is so bad about them? Yes, they are undead, rotting (though a simple spell fixes that), twisted abominations that mock life, but how is that wrong? Do they actually hurt anyone by being undead? Or is this just one more in a long line of dumb alignment decisions?

Azerian Kelimon
2008-04-04, 10:44 PM
They are a conduit of negative energy, which is inherently evil (A bunch of Bull****, IMO), and have to perform an unspeakably evil act to become liches. Think Horcruxes cranked up to 35.

That's the reason Archliches are a separate breed.

AmberVael
2008-04-04, 10:56 PM
The point is that creating undead is an evil act (by DnD standards). If you ask "why is that" the only answer I can give is this:
It is an evil act.
Really, when it comes down to it, that's the only explanation for what is 'good' and what is 'evil.' We (almost) all accept that things do fall under those categories, and use them, but even if you have an outside source which dictates that things are good and evil, you still don't have an explanation for why they are inherently moral one way or another, just that they are.

So, creating undead and the like is basically like murdering someone. Now granted, you can have neutral and even good undead, but they likely didn't choose their state. Even assuming that a lich became good or neutral, they would have had to repent because they had to willingly commit this horribly immoral act.

That's why liches are always evil. Because they're doing something horribly evil to become what they are.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-04-04, 11:01 PM
I'm still trying to understand how turning yourself into an Undead hurts anyone else, though. If you accept that Negative Energy is automatically evil, then, yes, so are all undead animated by it. But if you are willing to lock your soul in your body and live a distant mockery of life, why is that any more evil that overeating?

holywhippet
2008-04-04, 11:03 PM
I'm still trying to understand how turning yourself into an Undead hurts anyone else, though. If you accept that Negative Energy is automatically evil, then, yes, so are all undead animated by it. But if you are willing to lock your soul in your body and live a distant mockery of life, why is that any more evil that overeating?

IIRC, the actions requred to become a lich are supposed to involve evil things like murdering children.

dman11235
2008-04-04, 11:05 PM
Wrong AK, negative energy is not inherently evil. I should write an essay on pos/neg energy, everyone misunderstands what they stand for. Negative energy is death and destruction, and positive is life and creation. If anything they are chaos and law respectively. But no, they aren't.

A lich is evil because in order to become one, he must perform an unspeakably evil act. Go read the description in the MM again on phylactery creation.

As for undead being evil: they are a perversion of life. A sin against being.

Lord Iames Osari
2008-04-04, 11:06 PM
Going solely by RAW, we don't know. We just know that it is.

Inventing our own fluff for a moment, perhaps the ritual to become a lich involves some evil act, like making a deal with dark powers or sacrificing and innocent's life so you can extract the iron from their fresh blood to strengthen your phylactery. *shrug*

Admiral_Kelly
2008-04-04, 11:06 PM
1) Undead carry diseases which cause people to become sick and die.
2) You are living in an unnatural, disfigured, and unholy life. You become twisted in form, only a minor resmblance of what you once were (unnatural); you shed away most of your body (disfigured); your soul becomes bound to the earth, bypassing whatever afterlife you deserve to go (unholy).
3) You are a symbol of fear and dread; causing people to become discomforted by your sight.

On that basis, the act of becoming a lich is evil (as is continuing to exist as one; probably).All I have to say.

hylian chozo
2008-04-04, 11:09 PM
I'm still trying to understand how turning yourself into an Undead hurts anyone else, though. If you accept that Negative Energy is automatically evil, then, yes, so are all undead animated by it. But if you are willing to lock your soul in your body and live a distant mockery of life, why is that any more evil that overeating?

Because the rituals required to become a lich are evil. Killing babies, eating puppies, etc. That kind of stuff I guess. It never really goes into detail about what you need to do, but says that it is unspeakably evil. Link (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lich.htm)

AmberVael
2008-04-04, 11:13 PM
@ holywhippet
No, it just says it is an irrevocably evil act, it gives no specifics. Presumably simply becoming a lich is evil, requiring no sacrifices or the like beyond giving up your mortal body.

@ Iames and hylian chozo
Who says that there needs to be an act beyond turning yourself into a lich to be evil? If an Animate Dead spell is evil, and all it does it turn corpses into skeletons (even if they were willingly donated, or any other factors) then why would turning your living body into a skeleton be less evil?

@ Admiral Kelly
1) A living body is more effective at carrying diseases than a cleaned skeleton.
2) Changing and warping the body is not innately evil (at least in DnD terms), otherwise using transmutation would be evil, as would becoming a psion uncarnate (and neither are).
3) Just because someone is hideous and scary doesn't make them evil.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-04-04, 11:18 PM
If the process of making a phylactery involves an unspeakably evil act like murdering children, then yes, most Liches are evil. But if the act of making a Phylactary itself is evil, then we're back to where we started, with why is that act evil? However, I disagree with Admiral_Kelly's points. Undead are not necessarily diseased, especial with Gentle Repose readily available for an epic-level spellcaster. As to "Unnatural, disfigured, and unholy", how is any of that evil? The only one who suffers is the person who became a Lich. Everyone else can go about their lives and ignore him, he is the only one who must accept the consequences of his actions. If it doesn't hurt anyone else, how is it evil? As for "Symbol of fear and dread", how is he any scarier than the CG Lion Totem Barbarian with 40 Str? I would probably be pretty nervous in the presence of both.

BardicDuelist
2008-04-04, 11:19 PM
To me, basing it on D&D's very black and white version of good and evil, a lich can never be good, because existing as one is evil. However, it can be neutral, because comitting an evil act for survival is a fairly neutral thing. If the lich does good things, it can be neutral, but not good. I would still have it detect as evil though, because the negative energy is inherently evil in that it is damaging to the life force of other living things.

Again, not RAW, perhaps not RAI, and perhaps against the fluff too, but this is how I interpret it.

Catch
2008-04-04, 11:19 PM
I've always wondered why, exactly, every single Lich out there has to be evil. Intrinsically evil to the point where WotC (inventors of the LG Succubus Paladin) decided to create a good Lich, they had to create it as an entirely separate class of monster. What is so bad about them? Yes, they are undead, rotting (though a simple spell fixes that), twisted abominations that mock life, but how is that wrong? Do they actually hurt anyone by being undead? Or is this just one more in a long line of dumb alignment decisions?

The short answer? No. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baelnorn)

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, though, they're rotting, fetid evil.

dman11235
2008-04-04, 11:22 PM
Irrevocably evil means you cannot make amends for it. So you are evil for all eternity.

Now, Animate Dead is evil because it uses negative energy to do evil things, namely, pervert the life of some hapless soul. Keep in mind that animating somebody's skeleton means they can't be resurrected any more, because it severs the ties between soul and body and yadda yadda.

Good job on debunking those points, but the basis for them is right. Undead are a perversion of life, and that's why they are evil. (S)He could just have done a (much) better job at relaying that.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-04-04, 11:27 PM
Good job on debunking those points, but the basis for them is right. Undead are a perversion of life, and that's why they are evil. But why is it evil to be a perversion of life when the only person who's life is being perverted is your own? If it doesn't affect anyone else, then why does the multiverse give a ***?

Admiral_Kelly
2008-04-04, 11:33 PM
@ Admiral Kelly
1) A living body is more effective at carrying diseases than a cleaned skeleton.Funny thing about bones. They rot and it is not a simple matter of cleaning them. Overtime, they will collect such things, making you a deadly carrier (or so I believe; perhaps this matter should be further looked into).
2) Changing and warping the body is not innately evil (at least in DnD terms), otherwise using transmutation would be evil, as would becoming a psion uncarnate (and neither are).Bodily mutilation is an evil act and shedding all of your flesh away is probably the highest degree of such. You are doing yourself great harm by removing the senses of smell, taste, most definitely feeling to; and the ability to enjoy life. Such damage to ones self can only be evil. And this does not say anything about binding your soul to the earth.
3) Just because someone is hideous and scary doesn't make them evil.Making yourself so unsightly is. People with birth defects did not choose to alter themselves; Liches do.

shadow_archmagi
2008-04-04, 11:40 PM
So if I pick up a knife now and slash my face to shreds, making horrible scars and then adding all kinds of weird face paint on top of that, that is an EVIL thing to do?

AmberVael
2008-04-04, 11:41 PM
Funny thing about bones. They rot and it is not a simple matter of cleaning them. Overtime, they will collect such things, making you a deadly carrier (or so I believe; perhaps this matter should be further looked into).
Such things, however, can be bypassed with magic or preparation. And anyone else's body will do the same, given time. Under the proper circumstances, it won't be any more evil than someone else dying and rotting.


Bodily mutilation is an evil act and shedding all of your flesh away is probably the highest degree of such. You are doing yourself great harm by removing the senses of smell, taste, most definitely feeling to; and the ability to enjoy life. Such damage to ones self can only be evil. And this does not say anything about binding your soul to the earth.
That is a matter of opinion- but again, with dnd rules...
A Psion Uncarnate willingly sheds all their flesh and has no change of alignment (becoming incorporeal). And also notice that a ghost can be any alignment. Your arguments do not hold against the rules being presented here.


Making yourself so unsightly is. People with birth defects did not choose to alter themselves; Liches do.
And someone gaining the Frightful Presence ability of a dragon ALSO chose to become that scary, and yet they suffer no consequences.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-04-04, 11:43 PM
Funny thing about bones. They rot and it is not a simple matter of cleaning them. Overtime, they will collect such things, making you a deadly carrier (or so I believe; perhaps this matter should be further looked into).Gentle Repose. You can get a constant-effect item of it fairly cheap.
Bodily mutilation is an evil act and shedding all of your flesh away is probably the highest degree of such. You are doing yourself great harm by removing the senses of smell, taste, most definitely feeling to; and the ability to enjoy life. Such damage to ones self can only be evil.It's their body to do with as they will. Do you think tattoos and piercings are evil, too?
And this does not say anything about binding your soul to the earth.Again, if they want to bind their soul to the earth, why does that matter? A good person who does so is choosing to avoid the glory of the heavens in favor of existence here. I don't get why that's anyone else's problem. If they want to exist for a while longer, why is that an evil act? It doesn't hurt anyone else, since all they are doing is delaying death, they aren't even permanently affecting the natural order.
Making yourself so unsightly is. People with birth defects did not choose to alter themselves; Liches do.I refer you to my earlier statement about tattoos and body piercings.

GammaPaladin
2008-04-04, 11:50 PM
Now, Animate Dead is evil because it uses negative energy to do evil things, namely, pervert the life of some hapless soul. Keep in mind that animating somebody's skeleton means they can't be resurrected any more, because it severs the ties between soul and body and yadda yadda.
Not true.

You can use animate dead on their corpse, and they can still be resurrected with the True Resurrection spell from a bloody fingernail clipping. And the zombie you created is in no way affected by this process.

There's a reason why I houserule all [EVIL] descriptors away and allow good liches. It's because those rules are dumb.

If you kill children to raise as zombies, that's evil. If you raise corpses from a graveyard, well, it's probably illegal, but I don't think it qualifies as evil, per se. It's all about what you do with the spell.

kleinfehn
2008-04-04, 11:51 PM
So if I pick up a knife now and slash my face to shreds, making horrible scars and then adding all kinds of weird face paint on top of that, that is an EVIL thing to do?

No, we call that a bit off in the head.

About liches, I always wondered: What if some good wizard had to become a lich to save something? Maybe there is a lich killing his country so he becomes a lich to fight back and save people's lives.

Admiral_Kelly
2008-04-04, 11:58 PM
I reject the premise that a valid point I make can be overcome by a little magic. By that logic, murder can be justified under certain conditions because of the resurrection spell.

Further, I also reject the premise that 'If it does not harm anyone else, it is not evil.' Harming yourself, in any way, IS evil. It is not a matter of 'My body, I do what I like.' it is a matter of 'You have to take care of yourself for your own benefit.' Becoming a lich is the polar opposite of that.

Souls and the afterlife. How is forestalling your judgment by the gods who reward/punish the dead based on their merits in life a good thing? If you are an evil person, you are avoiding your punishment. if you are a good person, you are rejecting eternal happiness.

Admittedly, the above paragraph depends on the cosmology which varies according to the DM. So, in a sense, that point varies.

skywalker
2008-04-05, 12:02 AM
Wrong AK, negative energy is not inherently evil. I should write an essay on pos/neg energy, everyone misunderstands what they stand for. Negative energy is death and destruction, and positive is life and creation. If anything they are chaos and law respectively. But no, they aren't.


Chaos is not death. Law is not life, or creation. My word. Chaos has more claim to creation than law.

OP, I think you're right, but D&D operates on the "Voldemort is a perversion of life" ideal, which does have merit. I think becoming a lich, at the least, means you're mal-adjusted, playing god, etc. Because you're taking control of when you die(in this case, never) and cheating nature, living past your due date, essentially. I would think druids would have more problems with you than clerics, however.

Tequila Sunrise
2008-04-05, 12:09 AM
Liches are evil for the same reason that werewolves and zombies are evil: they're creepy and scary. No it doesn't make sense, but whaddya want, this is D&D? If you want it to make sense you have to do one of two things:

1. Decide why exaclty liches are evil. This is my preferred option, because I like liches and undead generally being evil. So I've decided that undead are evil because their condition actually causes their minds to erode and turns them into hateful creatures. Yes, by doing this I am going beyond RAW but that's the point of using my imagination.

2. Decide that liches aren't by default evil. It's not an unreasonable decision and who's to tell a DM 'no, you're running your game wrong; all liches are evil'.

It's that simple,
TS

AmberVael
2008-04-05, 12:13 AM
I reject the premise that a valid point I make can be overcome by a little magic. By that logic, murder can be justified under certain conditions because of the resurrection spell.
Not so, because the use of gentle repose magic and the like is an act of prevention and not an attempt at reconciling things after the fact. I would compare it more to taking an anger management course than anything- you know you have a potential problem, so you take care of it using certain methods so it won't actually ever BE a problem.


Further, I also reject the premise that 'If it does not harm anyone else, it is not evil.' Harming yourself, in any way, IS evil. It is not a matter of 'My body, I do what I like.' it is a matter of 'You have to take care of yourself for your own benefit.' Becoming a lich is the polar opposite of that.
This still does not address other acquired templates that have the same (or even more radical) affects on your body though.
And even if you argue that mutilating your body in real life is evil, even if you are correct, this isn't the thought process that the WotC people used.
Another example for you: Grafting. You can add on new parts, warp old parts, and generally become any kind of creepy abomination that you want with grafting. Gaining grafts or the ability TO graft people, or even the PrC that focuses on grafting- none of it requires or makes you evil by use.
I do not argue real morality here, only the thought of those who created the Lich template. Bodily mutilation was not one of their reasons in making the lich evil.
Furthermore, willingly becoming undead itself isn't (despite my earlier thoughts) a strictly evil act. See the Necropolitan template from Libris Mortis, which has no effect on alignment at all.


Souls and the afterlife. How is forestalling your judgment by the gods who reward/punish the dead based on their merits in life a good thing? If you are an evil person, you are avoiding your punishment. if you are a good person, you are rejecting eternal happiness.

I dunno. But again, Necropolitan template makes you undead and not evil. There are some ways you can become elemental and not evil. Then there is the strange little Alienist PrC which makes you abducted by lurking aliens from mars when your time is up and never seen again, but that doesn't make you evil either.
So I don't think that was WotC's reasoning either.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-04-05, 12:14 AM
I reject the premise that a valid point I make can be overcome by a little magic. By that logic, murder can be justified under certain conditions because of the resurrection spell.But it can also be overcome by basic hygiene, or by never leaving your house.
Further, I also reject the premise that 'If it does not harm anyone else, it is not evil.' Harming yourself, in any way, IS evil. It is not a matter of 'My body, I do what I like.' it is a matter of 'You have to take care of yourself for your own benefit.' Becoming a lich is the polar opposite of that.Why? I think this is a breakdown between us that can't be crossed, but I fail to understand how the gods can decide a decision someone made that only affected themselves was wrong.
Souls and the afterlife. How is forestalling your judgment by the gods who reward/punish the dead based on their merits in life a good thing? If you are an evil person, you are avoiding your punishment. if you are a good person, you are rejecting eternal happiness.Why is avoiding death from disease or old age any more evil than avoiding death from a goblin's sword? They both have the same effect in the end, you put off going before the gods for a while, so why is the fact that the Lich is better at it evil?

Xuincherguixe
2008-04-05, 12:14 AM
It depends on what judgements one makes about things like "is using negative energy evil" (the rulebooks are inconsistent on this). What is the ritual used to become a lich? And, is unnaturally extending ones lifespan evil.


Lichs will always be something unnatural, but is simply being unnatural enough to be evil? And, if that's all it takes to be evil, does being evil even matter?

That's another implication of arbitrary alignment. Being "evil" may not actually mean anything.

FlyMolo
2008-04-05, 12:36 AM
I've always wondered why, exactly, every single Lich out there has to be evil. Intrinsically evil to the point where WotC (inventors of the LG Succubus Paladin) decided to create a good Lich, they had to create it as an entirely separate class of monster. What is so bad about them? Yes, they are undead, rotting (though a simple spell fixes that), twisted abominations that mock life, but how is that wrong? Do they actually hurt anyone by being undead? Or is this just one more in a long line of dumb alignment decisions?

Liches are created by killing two innocent people. One half your age, one double it. That's an evil act. Liches make sense. Zombies don't.

Zombies should really be(and are, in my games) just sort of constructs made out of dead bodies. They tend to kill people because the people who don't mind if the get complaints from the community at large, at least because of the smell, tend to be evil. Under this model, zombies that drop out of your control for whatever means, just stop dead and stop working, or continue doing whatever they were just doing forever, depending on how capricious I am feeling.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-04-05, 12:37 AM
Liches are created by killing two innocent people. One half your age, one double it. That's an evil act. Liches make sense. Zombies don't.Where is this from? Because that could end the discussion.

Ograbme
2008-04-05, 01:32 AM
Further, I also reject the premise that 'If it does not harm anyone else, it is not evil.' Harming yourself, in any way, IS evil. It is not a matter of 'My body, I do what I like.' it is a matter of 'You have to take care of yourself for your own benefit.'
Whaa? Eating too many carbs and working in a coal mine are evil acts?

Souls and the afterlife. How is forestalling your judgment by the gods who reward/punish the dead based on their merits in life a good thing? If you are an evil person, you are avoiding your punishment. if you are a good person, you are rejecting eternal happiness.

Admittedly, the above paragraph depends on the cosmology which varies according to the DM. So, in a sense, that point varies.
Better tell those village healers and apothecaries that they're forestalling judgmement of people's souls.

SadisticFishing
2008-04-05, 01:55 AM
Book of Vile Darkness, Page 8.

"Unliving corpses - corrupt mockeries of life and purity - are inherently evil. Creating them is one of the most heinous crimes against the world that a character can commit. Even if they are commanded to do something good, undead invariably bring negative energy into the world, which makes it a darker and more evil place."

Q.E.D.

Lichdom is evil.

tyckspoon
2008-04-05, 02:09 AM
Well, yes, the BoVD would say that, wouldn't it. It's also one of the only places where you will see statements that negative energy is necessarily evil, which isn't true in the core books (Energy Drain and Enervation are not [evil], for example.) There may be other reasons that making undead is evil, such as that it apparently entangles another being's soul, but it's not because they make use of negative energy. And it certainly doesn't explain why a lich must be evil by virtue of being undead.


Personally, I figure liches are evil because the best-known and easiest to research method for becoming a lich makes a person evil. It involves steps so vile that you cannot willingly complete them and retain a non-evil alignment. That doesn't mean there are no non-evil ways to become a lich; you could research a new form of the ritual that would leave your morality intact. But if you open up a typical tome of necromantic lore and look up how to become a lich, it's going to detail the evil way.

SadisticFishing
2008-04-05, 02:12 AM
Actually, if you read it the way it (might be) meant to be read, permanent negative energy is evil, whereas short bursts are not. Summoning Undead is okay, because they away shortly... Enervation, also okay, goes away - But creating undead is evil.

But permanent negative energy being evil does explain why liches are evil, so hopefully that's not what you meant.

By the way, Book of Vile Darkness is one of two books based ENTIRELY on alignment, and so we should be able to believe what it says, at least to some degree - otherwise we're back into the realm of houserules.

tyckspoon
2008-04-05, 02:16 AM
Actually, if you read it the way it (might be) meant to be read, permanent negative energy is evil, whereas short bursts are not.

Counterpoint: The Negative Energy Plane itself has no alignment. It is very strongly negative dominent, naturally, it kills the heck out of living creatures, but it is not evil. It's just energy. The presence of negative energy does not account for the Always Evil status of undead.

SadisticFishing
2008-04-05, 02:19 AM
Maybe it's one of those weird relativity things, where Negative energy has a place - but it's not the material plane.

/Shrug. The BoVD quite clearly says why Liches are always evil, you can argue, but you're just finding niggling inconsistencies in other things - nothing that even comes close to showing that there can be good liches. Except, of course, the Libris Mortis, but that book seems to follow a slightly different view of undead, and that's quite clearly a variant...

Deathless on the other hand, are a completely different story.

lord_khaine
2008-04-05, 04:23 AM
actualy since libris mortis is the main book for the undead, and the BoVD is a 3.0 book, then what LB says should be given precedence.

that aside, it have been mentioned in several older books as well that good liches is a posibility.

mostlyharmful
2008-04-05, 05:13 AM
Neither the BoVD nor the BoED present morality in any kind of coherent way, certainly not in any way that I would want to live by.

DnDs attitude to negative energy doesn't make any kind of sense because it's been written from two seperate, mutualy exclusive, viewpoints. There's a great essay about this on the Wizard boards... http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=632562

Either negative energy is aligned (Eeeevill Mwah-ha-ha) or it isn't (naturally occuring phenomena like fire or gravity). Bits of the core books have been writen from both angles, to make sense of it you just have to decide which is for you and revise the other half to make sense.

kamikasei
2008-04-05, 07:34 AM
"Unliving corpses - corrupt mockeries of life and purity - are inherently evil. Creating them is one of the most heinous crimes against the world that a character can commit. Even if they are commanded to do something good, undead invariably bring negative energy into the world, which makes it a darker and more evil place."

This proves not only that liches are evil but that Necropolitans are necessarily evil too. Yet they're not. So this logic can't possibly hold.

Yvian
2008-04-05, 08:34 AM
Whaa? Eating too many carbs and working in a coal mine are evil acts?


Yes and No.

Yes - Gluttony - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluttony
No - Diligence - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Virtues

As a libertarian, I do see the virtue of “Don’t harm others” and “Mind your own business”. That being said, if you look at the history of theology this is rarely sufficient to achieve grace. Most religions extol to do more than avoid negative reactions – but also positive actions. Often this is tied up to personal purity.

I would argue that personal purity is hard to achieve when one has warped natural law [The natural order in D&D is to fight hard, die hard, then go to the outer plans to achieve a higher level], hard wired oneself into the negative plan, and try to cheat death.

PirateMonk
2008-04-05, 09:01 AM
I reject the premise that a valid point I make can be overcome by a little magic. By that logic, murder can be justified under certain conditions because of the resurrection spell.

In a society where true resurrection is freely available for all, how is killing someone evil if it doesn't inconvenience anyone?

AslanCross
2008-04-05, 09:56 AM
In a society where true resurrection is freely available for all, how is killing someone evil if it doesn't inconvenience anyone?

Err, no. True resurrection is a 9th level spell and requires material components worth 25,000 GP. It is hardly free. It would take at least a 17th-level cleric to cast true resurrection, a service that would cost 1,530 GP in addition to the material components.

That amounts to a total cost of 26,530 GP, which is the equivalent of the wages of 265,300 days, or roughly 727 years of normal work to the average commoner who earns 1 silver piece a day.

It's hardly available for all, let alone free.

Kurald Galain
2008-04-05, 10:08 AM
I've always wondered why, exactly, every single Lich out there has to be evil. Intrinsically evil to the point where WotC (inventors of the LG Succubus Paladin) decided to create a good Lich, they had to create it as an entirely separate class of monster.

They don't, really. The "good lich" is one of the more common anti-cliches, as displayed (among others) in Eye of the Beholder III.

AmberVael
2008-04-05, 10:11 AM
In a society where true resurrection is freely available for all, how is killing someone evil if it doesn't inconvenience anyone?

Well, assault and abuse is still evil, so even though they survive (...sort of) you're still causing them pain and suffering that they shouldn't have to bear.

hamishspence
2008-04-05, 10:16 AM
First appearence of good lich in 3rd ed was Monsters of Faerun splatbook, with Baelnorns and Archliches as the two variants, with differing special powers. Libris Mortis gave us the "Good Lich" (no special powers)

The general theme of good liches is they did what they did for unselfish reasons, to serve and guard, in the case of baelnorns.

All Good liches are immune to turning.

I am not sure how 4th ed will do it, but general theme is undead can be noble and good, and aren't always evil. But the sample ones are ensouled undead, like liches, ghosts, revenants, which suggests soulless undead will never be of good alignment.

Fostire
2008-04-05, 10:22 AM
There is also a "good lich" variant in Libris Mortis (page 156)

Illiterate Scribe
2008-04-05, 10:30 AM
As for undead being evil: they are a perversion of life. A sin against being.

You living supremacist. What are you trying to institute, some sort of discriminatory regime?

Azerian Kelimon
2008-04-05, 10:31 AM
Wrong AK, negative energy is not inherently evil. I should write an essay on pos/neg energy, everyone misunderstands what they stand for. Negative energy is death and destruction, and positive is life and creation. If anything they are chaos and law respectively. But no, they aren't.

A lich is evil because in order to become one, he must perform an unspeakably evil act. Go read the description in the MM again on phylactery creation.

As for undead being evil: they are a perversion of life. A sin against being.

Sorry, Dman, but the PHB/DMG EXPLICITLY state it is evil. I'm just repeating the Word of God/s.

Also, aren't good liches animated by positive energy, or negative energy held in check by something, thus allowing them to be good?

Orzel
2008-04-05, 10:38 AM
Liches are usually evil because it permanent undead disrupts the positive and negative energy balance which mocks the natural and divine order of life and death without permission. Negative energy isn't evil but a lich is a walking bag o' evil since it raises the evil level of whatever plane it's on just by being there.

The process of creating one is usually evil as evil as well.

You could make a good lich but the circumstances for one wound be rare. You'll have to create a positive energy monster on something.

Yeril
2008-04-05, 10:44 AM
I am not sure how 4th ed will do it, but general theme is undead can be noble and good, and aren't always evil. But the sample ones are ensouled undead, like liches, ghosts, revenants, which suggests soulless undead will never be of good alignment.

I'm preety sure Soulless undead are going to be considered "unaligned" because they are merely objects being controlled through magic, and have no concept of right or wrong or anything other than what they are told.

wodan46
2008-04-05, 10:50 AM
Liches must perform an unspeakably evil act in order to become 1, and gain an aura of fear. They are always listed as evil.

Baelnorn reportedly go through a similar process, except there is no mention of committing unspeakably evil acts, and no aura of fear. They also retain the paralyzing touch and other necromantic abilities. They are usually lawful good.

In short, given that both of those archetypes has negative energy oriented abilities, and both have a phylactery, meaning that neither of those are what qualify the lich as evil.

That implies that the unspeakably evil act is something else entirely, and furthermore is so horrible that the Lich has an aura of fear just by doing it.

hamishspence
2008-04-05, 10:51 AM
Channelling the energies is specified in PHB. However inflict and cure spells have no alignment descriptor, as do other spells associated with negative energy. It has always been blurred_ simpler to assume that it is Evil descriptor of spells that create undead, that is the reason for undead being Evil, not just the negative energy bit. Or, argue that the other spells merely move the energy around, whereas undead creation sets up a permanent tap of energy out of the material plane.

Process of creating phylactory is left undefined in MM, simply said to be evil. This should automatically be modified for Good Liches: assume they discovered a variant of the ritual.

And Dragon magazine 336: Birth of the Dead, had more detailed descriptions of process, saying DC 35 knowledge(arcane) check needed to learn incantations and rituals over 1d4 months. Replace with Knowledge (religion) for clerical liches. This can be forgone if a mentor exists, or information is already to hand.

It states the arcane ritual involves the spells create undead, magic jar, permanancy. Variants are said to exist.

The divine ritual involves the spells create undead, harm, unhallow.

This is not in core books but is an attempt at providing info. same article has details for creation processes, and spontaneous formation, of many other undead.

If you want to play a Good lich, state that they discovered non-evil version of lich ritual, and work differently. Or, replace undead template with deathless template.

3rd ed never fully clarified it, with the Negative energy plane being neutral, and many negative nergy spells, as well. 4th ed does away with the Evil Negative Energy trope anyway: see World and Monsters.

Jimblee
2008-04-05, 10:51 AM
If the setting says that undead are evil, then Liches are evil because they're willing to do an inherently evil process in order to become something evil.

If undead are treated as a sort of neutral group, then becoming a Lich is using a neutral process in order to not change their alignment.

If undead are somehow a good thing, then becoming a Lich is using a good process in order to become good.

You get what I mean?

hamishspence
2008-04-05, 10:55 AM
"One of the most heinous crimes" has been toned down a bit. Fiendish Codex 2 defined casting an evil spell as a 1 point evil act, this includes Animate Dead and Create Undead. Equal to humiliating somebody on purpose for fun, or torturing someone without damaging them, defined as Intimidating Torture, and not as bad as stealing from the needy, or betrayal for personal gain, much less murder.

puppyavenger
2008-04-05, 11:26 AM
Sorry, Dman, but the PHB/DMG EXPLICITLY state it is evil. I'm just repeating the Word of God/s.



oksy, pick up your DMG, Flip to the negative energy plane description, DO YOU SEE THE [EVIL] DESCRIPTER? And if permantly bringing negative energy into the world is evil than
a. the inflict spells should be evil, along with an energy drain spell that results in lost levels
b. permanantly bringing positive energy into the world should be evil for the same reasons.
Also would someone like to explain how Entropy is Evil outside the young wizards universe?
and finaly

1) Undead carry diseases which cause people to become sick and die.
so do rats, and bacteria, and other humans, and any type of animal, plus gentle repose


2) You are living in an unnatural, disfigured, and unholy life. You become twisted in form, only a minor resmblance of what you once were (unnatural); you shed away most of your body (disfigured); your soul becomes bound to the earth, bypassing whatever afterlife you deserve to go (unholy).
1. I'm sure the cultists of Neul don't consider you unholy, that word loses all meaning with opposing gods
2. unaturel, so the druids don't like you. you're point? reincanated and ressurected people have just as much a claim to the title as you.
3.disfigured,ghosts, ethralness, grafts, fleshworker, transmuters, wildshape, reincarnation, people working in dangeros jobs, people who rush into a burning building to save an infant and get face burns, tatoos.
4. so... you're a Fairy?


3) You are a symbol of fear and dread; causing people to become discomforted by your sight.
and this is evil how... so does a beserking barbarion, or a dragon, or a half dragon, or a biblical angel
also do you think cryogenics are evil;?

Ograbme
2008-04-05, 11:44 AM
Sine its been brought up, what effect does the creation of undead, intelligent or otherwise, have on the soul of the body's owner?

Also, some people here are throwing around the words "natural" and "unnatural". What do these mean in D&D?

mostlyharmful
2008-04-05, 12:05 PM
Sine its been brought up, what effect does the creation of undead, intelligent or otherwise, have on the soul of the body's owner?

Also, some people here are throwing around the words "natural" and "unnatural". What do these mean in D&D?

So long as the undead is active they cant be raised, which seems to indicate that the "mindless" undead serve as a sort of trap for the soul although being able to raise multiple undead from a single corpse sort of undermines this.

And "natural" and "unnatural" means whatever the DM says it means in DnD, there's bits of core or a source book for just about any position you care to hold. Even Undead and Abbominations are commonly occuring parts of each campaign world, with negative energy being an integral component of the metaphysic

DementedFellow
2008-04-05, 12:08 PM
In Libris Mortis, there is a section devoted to Good-Aligned Liches.

It's not that crazy at all.

EDIT: darn I got ninja'd. I totally missed that post in my scanning. Oh well.

The Rose Dragon
2008-04-05, 12:09 PM
Sine its been brought up, what effect does the creation of undead, intelligent or otherwise, have on the soul of the body's owner?

Well, you can't use anything less than True Resurrection to bring them back to life. But that's it.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-04-05, 12:14 PM
I've always wondered why, exactly, every single Lich out there has to be evil. Intrinsically evil to the point where WotC (inventors of the LG Succubus Paladin) decided to create a good Lich, they had to create it as an entirely separate class of monster. What is so bad about them? Yes, they are undead, rotting (though a simple spell fixes that), twisted abominations that mock life, but how is that wrong? Do they actually hurt anyone by being undead? Or is this just one more in a long line of dumb alignment decisions?

The standard lich is the "evil undead spellcaster" template. You get non-Evil liches, just like you get non-Evil fiends and non-Good celestials. "Always X" means something like "99%".

Forgotten Realms, for instance, has for years and years had baelnorns (elven liches, usually non-Evil) and archliches (Good liches). In fact, archliches used to be mentioned in the M&M, back in AD&D.

AD&D 2nd edition Monstrous Manual, page 223, lich entry, last paragraph:

Archlich
From time to time, sages have heard rumors of liches having alignments other than evil, and even lawful good liches apparently have existed. There have even been reports of priests who, in extreme circumstances, have become liches. These reports have recently been verified, but the archlich is as rare as Roc's teeth.

I don't see any reason archliches need to be mechanically different from liches (or need to be that rare in your game).

Demons_eye
2008-04-05, 12:16 PM
Okdont know if any one has asked or this is a stupid question but...

Say this evil dm domanites(spelling?) you and makes you make you into a linch, Can he do that, dose that make you evil?

StoryKeeper
2008-04-05, 12:22 PM
A few thoughts:

*If Liches must perform an incredibly evil act to become liches, then this alone would be enough to make them evil (at least at the time they are becoming liches.) On the other hand, Liches are extremely long-lived, and it makes sense that they could at some point in their millenia of existence decide to work for good causes and for good reasons.

Is it for some reason impossible for someone who became a lich to start doing good things for good reasons? If not, then let's consider the possible lich that fights side-by-side with the heroes trying to stop a powerful demon lord or whatever. Certainly his actions would be good, so then only his existence could make him somehow evil.

*A lich is, like all undead, fueled by negative energy. Personally, I've always seen negative and positive energy as being seperate from good and evil. Positive energy is usually associated with life, creation, etc. I could go into a rather large rant about my thoughts on why positive and negative energy do what they do, but for relevance to this topic I'll move on. If we look at positive and negative energy as being natural force that balance each other out, and not necessarily good or evil, then simply being fueled by negative energy isn't necessarily evil.

On the other hand, if you want to view the universe as being in perfect balance without anything going from one plane to another (in other words, everything would be in perfect balance if everyone went to the plane they came from and stayed there), then bringing energy (including negative energy) into a plane other than the plane it came from is at least slightly evil because it unbalances things and that throws off the healthy balance of the universe (keep in mind that this assumes that the universe is perfectly balanced when nothing moves from plane to plane). But following this train of thought, using positive energy would be just as evil as using negative energy. This would mean that good clerics are actually contributing to evil every time they use a cure spell, and that the deathless creatures (fueled by positive energy) are also evil.

And if I haven't made myself too confusing to follow yet, then let me continue on by saying this:

In the DnD universe, people move from plane to plane and use various spells that disturb the assumed natural balance. That would mean that the universe is already thrown way out of the natural balance, and that simply using negative energy (as well as any other type of energy) is not in-and-of-itself evil. Therefore, in a rambling round-about trail of what I think is mostly solid logic, Liches are not necessarily evil.


I hope I haven't made myself too confusing.


P.S. and I do like the idea that liches can be created without evil acts through the use of more obscure and difficult rituals. The dark side is easier, but the light side is more rewarding kind of thing.

GammaPaladin
2008-04-05, 12:48 PM
Book of Vile Darkness, Page 8...

Oh gods! Keep it away! The BoVD and BoED are the worst, most horrible abominations of alignment definition ever, and all copies should be burned to protect people from their stupid, black and white philosophy.

RyanM
2008-04-05, 02:01 PM
Personally, I figure liches are evil because the best-known and easiest to research method for becoming a lich makes a person evil. It involves steps so vile that you cannot willingly complete them and retain a non-evil alignment. That doesn't mean there are no non-evil ways to become a lich; you could research a new form of the ritual that would leave your morality intact. But if you open up a typical tome of necromantic lore and look up how to become a lich, it's going to detail the evil way.

Sounds like a quite reasonable explanation. Also, people who are evil or borderline evil to begin with would just do it the lazy way, not researching their own method. Especially if the evil way is easier.

Also, I'm getting the feeling that "positive" and "negative" energies are pretty much just as arbitrary as good and evil. Positive energy is creation and life, negative energy is destruction and death. But then, wouldn't negative energy applied to a corpse just... make it stay dead? At what point does negative energy "loop around" and become so negative that it acts sort of like a more unsightly version of positive energy? Or is it mathematical, that you have to do two negative spell things to a corpse, thus creating a positive? :smalltongue:

It'd make more sense if positive energy were used for creating undead (and didn't 2nd edition have something like "white" necromancy for healing and "black" necromancy for undead?). The difference, then, between resurrection and zombification is whether the soul returns. In that case, creating undead out of someone else's could be seen as evil, if the person's soul wishes to return, and you somehow prevent them. If they'd rather stay dead, though, it'd be a neutral act. And if they want you to zombify their corpse, it's a good act.

That could be an interesting homebrew approach to the undead. Resurrection is the same spell used to raise the undead. You just end up with a zombie instead of the original person if their soul doesn't want to return, or if you cast another spell first, to prevent them from returning.

StoryKeeper
2008-04-05, 02:15 PM
Also, I'm getting the feeling that "positive" and "negative" energies are pretty much just as arbitrary as good and evil. Positive energy is creation and life, negative energy is destruction and death. But then, wouldn't negative energy applied to a corpse just... make it stay dead? At what point does negative energy "loop around" and become so negative that it acts sort of like a more unsightly version of positive energy? Or is it mathematical, that you have to do two negative spell things to a corpse, thus creating a positive? :smalltongue:



Let me think... I had explained this stuff to myself earlier...

AHA! 2 negative energy effects won't reverse themselves (for example, 2 simultaneous inflict spells wouldn't result in a cure spells) because it's all just negative energy, and negative energy is not the opposite of itself. But Positive energy is Life, and Negative energy is death, and positve energy heals a living person, so negative energy heals a dead one! Eureka!

hamishspence
2008-04-05, 02:24 PM
Exalted and Vile have flaws, but they are the ones that introduce grey areas: differences between accident, negligence, and murder, and the notion that slaughtering evil creatures on sight is not always a good thing, especially if they haven't been seen to offend.

A lot of people take the approach that "its evil = it can be killed without problems" and the players handbook is very lacking in counters to this.

Thats why I like these two books, especially with Fiendish Codex 2 to quantify a few evil acts. I like them because they counter the usual attitude of players, that they can do anything they like to defeat monsters.

puppyavenger
2008-04-05, 03:03 PM
Exalted and Vile have flaws, but they are the ones that introduce grey areas: differences between accident, negligence, and murder, and the notion that slaughtering evil creatures on sight is not always a good thing, especially if they haven't been seen to offend.


the notion that lying is evil, that it's better to let the universe be olbiterated then sully your exhalted status, poisons that only work agaisnt evil for some reason, that LG is the most good and CE is the most evil...

Mewtarthio
2008-04-05, 03:06 PM
Another possibility is that, by having your soul outside your body, you affect your own ability to make moral choices. Perhaps liches, with their souls bound to an inanimate object, become coldly obsessed with their goals, to the point where they forget their ideals and monomaniacally pursue a single object for its own sake. In most cases, a lich becomes a lich to attain power or knowledge, and so they are evil since they eventually become corrupt, constantly seeking more knowledge or power with no regard to the cost. A lich seeking knowledge would ultimately desire to strip away all privacy and secrecy and become omniscient, while a lich seeking power would desire to dominate all life and become omnipotent.

Liches who undertake the ritual for another purpose would probably still become corrupted eventually. For instance, let's take the earlier example of a good wizard who becomes a lich to protect his country. That's all well and good for a time: You've got an immortal defender who seeks to uphold the ideals of your nation. Eventually, however, the lich becomes too obsessed with the nation. He defends it not because he loves his country but because the country is all he cares about. He no longer views the country as a representation of certain ideals, or a political system that he likes, but rather as an end in itself. He will forget the nation's ideals if they become inconvenient, and resort to harsher and harsher measures to keep the system intact. He'd ultimately look something like Andrew (http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Death_Penalty_in_Rapture) Ryan (http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Desperate_Times): A psychotic dictator ruling his twisted nation with an iron fist, completely oblivious to the fact that he has become the enemy.

Ograbme
2008-04-05, 03:31 PM
Another possibility is that, by having your soul outside your body, you affect your own ability to make moral choices.
I like this idea. A century or two without experiencing pain or hunger, you forget what it feels like. Then you don't care about inflicting it on others...

kamikasei
2008-04-05, 05:31 PM
Yes and No.

Yes - Gluttony - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluttony
No - Diligence - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Virtues

"Sin" and "Evil" are not equivalent, not in D&D alignment.

Cyclone231
2008-04-05, 05:35 PM
Just wanted to point this out:

Becoming a Lich is an unspeakably evil act.

It does not require one.


The process of becoming a lich is unspeakably evil and can be undertaken only by a willing character.

Collin152
2008-04-05, 05:40 PM
the notion that lying is evil, that it's better to let the universe be olbiterated then sully your exhalted status, poisons that only work agaisnt evil for some reason, that LG is the most good and CE is the most evil...

That concept is derived from Juedo-Christian values.
Other cultures possibly wouldn't view Law as being more Good than Chaos.

AslanCross
2008-04-05, 05:53 PM
Okdont know if any one has asked or this is a stupid question but...

Say this evil dm domanites(spelling?) you and makes you make you into a linch, Can he do that, dose that make you evil?

As has been posted above: You can only willingly become a lich. You can be turned into a vampire or vampire spawn unwillingly, but not a lich. It's a self-inflicted process and won't work if it's forced on you. No particulars why it's that way, but I'd say it's because lichdom involves severing your soul from your body.


That concept is derived from Juedo-Christian values.
Other cultures possibly wouldn't view Law as being more Good than Chaos.

I think he was being sarcastic. :smallwink:

SilverClawShift
2008-04-05, 06:00 PM
the notion that lying is evil, that it's better to let the universe be olbiterated then sully your exhalted status

My single biggest gripe with the book. Using absolutes as a measure of alignment is appaling, and leads to obnoxious no-win situations.

Being so selfish that you worry about your exalted status more than the lives of innocents is more evil than lying to the villains to buy the innocents more time and saftey.

Collin152
2008-04-05, 06:04 PM
I think he was being sarcastic. :smallwink:

Possibly. I wsa thinking about that earlier today, though, and felt like saying it when I got the chance.
And, well, I got the chance.

Agrippa
2008-04-05, 08:33 PM
It'd make more sense if positive energy were used for creating undead (and didn't 2nd edition have something like "white" necromancy for healing and "black" necromancy for undead?).

Um, actually, White Necromancy was healing, anti-undead, organic preservation and protective. Maybe even genetic mutation if you want. Gray Necromancy was divination, general purpose and undead creation that caused no direct harm to the living. Black Necromancy caused damage to the living, either as an attack or to create undead from the still living.

Zincorium
2008-04-05, 08:46 PM
Alignment is a pseudo-moral equivalent to jersey colors in sports. It lets everyone know what team you're on and determines who gets the point when you score.

There is no real reason that any undead which doesn't kill the living must be evil. Even then, undead like vampires are not offered any choice in the matter, they have to do it to survive. The entire scheme is founded on preconceptions that are crumbling under the weight of any real moral logic.

The real motivation for making them such is that paladins need to have things to smite. Protection from evil needs to have some effect on the myriad of things that go bump in the night. It's not consistent or well-thought out, it just is.

AslanCross
2008-04-05, 09:19 PM
There is no real reason that any undead which doesn't kill the living must be evil. Even then, undead like vampires are not offered any choice in the matter, they have to do it to survive.

Well, I certainly don't want to see angsty vampires who drink pig's blood or other substitutes. Not in D&D. :smalleek:

Zincorium
2008-04-05, 09:35 PM
Well, I certainly don't want to see angsty vampires who drink pig's blood or other substitutes. Not in D&D. :smalleek:

I don't either, but I think it hurts the game in the long run to fight vampires because they have an alignment entry of 'always chaotic evil, rather than for the more believable reason of them being predators with an alien frame of mind, whose survival depends on the manipulation and domination of others. They may not enjoy what they do, even though it's pleasurable, and may even attempt to do some kind of good to offset the harm they know they're causing, but in the end they can't change their nature or their needs.

You can go just as in depth for any intelligent monster, the alignment will still be an abstraction denoting who can smite whom rather than a real guide to the motivations behind things.

Rayzin
2008-04-05, 10:18 PM
Actually in this necromancy book i have it says to become a lich you have to have your container in still liquid blood of a virgin and an umbilical cord tied around it.

Rutee
2008-04-05, 10:35 PM
Oh for Gods sakes, could they be more heavy handed..

Zincorium
2008-04-05, 10:47 PM
Actually in this necromancy book i have it says to become a lich you have to have your container in still liquid blood of a virgin and an umbilical cord tied around it.

What, precisely, does virgin blood and umbilical cords have to do with becoming a living corpse? Even symbolically?

I can think of a million other things that better represent a transition from living to unliving. The only reason I can think of for that kind of ritual is the cliche 'attracting the attention of the dark gods', which has all the sophistication of a 2nd grade pageant.

tyckspoon
2008-04-05, 11:07 PM
What, precisely, does virgin blood and umbilical cords have to do with becoming a living corpse? Even symbolically?

I can think of a million other things that better represent a transition from living to unliving. The only reason I can think of for that kind of ritual is the cliche 'attracting the attention of the dark gods', which has all the sophistication of a 2nd grade pageant.

Necromancers are not known as the most subtle of people. Still, that sounds more like a demonologist or general Evil Occultist instruction. Probably get a result kind of like
"You remove the brooch from the flask of virginal blood. Even your unaugmented senses can feel the magic and evil radiating from the object."
"Sweet! So I'm a lich now?"
"No, it's just magically evil. Doesn't do anything."

Cyclone231
2008-04-05, 11:43 PM
Actually in this necromancy book i have it says to become a lich you have to have your container in still liquid blood of a virgin and an umbilical cord tied around it.But... I can get both of those without murdering someone.

kleinfehn
2008-04-06, 10:37 AM
I have a question. If a lich is just a wizard who made some kind of pact with a god/a god helps fuel them or helps them become a lich, can't whatever god associated with the lich just turn off the juice? I mean, if I was an evil god and one of my underligns decided to do something that I don't like I would just kill them.

AmberVael
2008-04-06, 10:39 AM
I have a question. If a lich is just a wizard who made some kind of pact with a god/a god helps fuel them or helps them become a lich, can't whatever god associated with the lich just turn off the juice? I mean, if I was an evil god and one of my underligns decided to do something that I don't like I would just kill them.

Well... yes, I suppose. But I have yet to see a lich that was created in such a manner, and it certainly isn't a standard lich.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-04-06, 06:53 PM
Well... yes, I suppose. But I have yet to see a lich that was created in such a manner, and it certainly isn't a standard lich.

Baneliches in FR are created by Bane, and have been around for, oh, 10+ years... they were in Monsters of Faerūn, and I've got a AD&D Monstrous Compendium Annual (or whatever) with them in it.

Whether they're directly created by Bane or not I don't recall off-hand, but any cleric using divine magic given by a god to become a lich is being turned into a lich by the god, and I'd assume that in most settings, a deity can take its magic away from someone if they break against it's rules, including negating magic items (like a phylactery) created using magic the deity granted.

So, yes, deities should be able to "turn off" cleric liches.

(Admittedly, I don't think Bane bothers destroying his liches specifically; if one went against him, he'd probably guide his followers to destroy it, but he guides them to fight each other regardless of betrayals of faith...)

Hal
2008-04-06, 09:35 PM
There is a certain disconnect I'm seeing in a lot of these posts. I think it's a philosophical thing.

It seems to be written into the "moral fabric" of the D&D setting that certain acts are just inherently evil. Asking "why is being a lich evil?" would be akin to asking "why is hurting someone evil?"

Some people have a personal philosophy of "as long as you're not bothering anyone," which is fine, but just isn't the "default" position of the D&D world. It seems like other people just like to pull at the loose threads and see how much they can get the tapestry to unwind.

Either way, I think a lot of people just aren't getting the concept of inherently evil acts. Come up with any fluff explanation you want for it, but that's how it seems to be written.

tyckspoon
2008-04-06, 10:11 PM
Either way, I think a lot of people just aren't getting the concept of inherently evil acts. Come up with any fluff explanation you want for it, but that's how it seems to be written.

Nah, we get that. The sticking point is that the books never actually say being a lich is an inherently evil thing or even give much reason to assume it is. There are some sources that say the process used to become a lich is evil, but I doubt even those insist that those are the only possible means of becoming a lich. If being a lich is not in itself evil, and it's possible to become a lich without committing irrevocably evil acts, then there's no reason for liches to be Always Evil. Except that they're written with the base assumption of being villainous figures and obviously nobody who isn't evil would ever want to be one.

Infinity_Biscuit
2008-04-06, 10:21 PM
There is a certain disconnect I'm seeing in a lot of these posts. I think it's a philosophical thing.

It seems to be written into the "moral fabric" of the D&D setting that certain acts are just inherently evil. Asking "why is being a lich evil?" would be akin to asking "why is hurting someone evil?"

Some people have a personal philosophy of "as long as you're not bothering anyone," which is fine, but just isn't the "default" position of the D&D world. It seems like other people just like to pull at the loose threads and see how much they can get the tapestry to unwind.

Either way, I think a lot of people just aren't getting the concept of inherently evil acts. Come up with any fluff explanation you want for it, but that's how it seems to be written.
If we agree on that, though, then it means the Good-Evil axis is entirely irrelevant for determining behavior. Liches can be Evil as can be without ever causing any harm to anyone or even intending to. They just have to do acts that are inherently Evil (capital E)... which can apparently include stuff such as turning yourself into a skeleton.

I somewhat approve of this, actually. It allows the preservation of the alignment-based abilities without actually requiring that most orcs and all liches are evil (minuscule e).

AmberVael
2008-04-06, 10:25 PM
These kind of debates are why I like to nix alignment entirely. :smallsigh:

And Infinity Biscuit... there's actually already a mechanical basis for that in the Outsider alignment subtype system. An outsider with an alignment subtype can register as a certain alignment and react in every way as if they WERE that alignment without actually BEING that alignment.

Mewtarthio
2008-04-06, 10:52 PM
If we agree on that, though, then it means the Good-Evil axis is entirely irrelevant for determining behavior. Liches can be Evil as can be without ever causing any harm to anyone or even intending to. They just have to do acts that are inherently Evil (capital E)... which can apparently include stuff such as turning yourself into a skeleton.

I somewhat approve of this, actually. It allows the preservation of the alignment-based abilities without actually requiring that most orcs and all liches are evil (minuscule e).

Epic Campaign Seed:

Morality is, indeed, objective, as many have believed. However, the shocking truth is that it is actually arbitrary. The one who holds the Keys of Heaven controls the afterlife. The power to define Good and Evil is contained within them. The Keys have been controled by a cabal of Good gods since time immemorable, but even now, the Forces of Evil are forging an alliance to retake the Keys and rewrite the rules once again...

RyanM
2008-04-07, 12:33 AM
It seems to be written into the "moral fabric" of the D&D setting that certain acts are just inherently evil. Asking "why is being a lich evil?" would be akin to asking "why is hurting someone evil?"

Well, why is hurting someone inherently evil? What if it's for a good cause, which greatly outweighs the harm to that one person? What if that person deserves to be hurt? What if they wish to be hurt, for whatever reason?

Moral absolutes are the domain of the lawful stupid.

hamishspence
2008-04-07, 05:10 AM
Lying is citied as not automatically evil, but morally risky, in Vile. Exalted should probably have used another example for that case, though it is a breach of paladin code, whether evil or not.

The reason given for not doing evil acts in a "good cause" is that each evil act leads to a fundemental shift in the balance of the universe.

And if DM is insisting on Do an Evil Act or universe will be destroyed, they aren't being very fair to the players. Choice should never be that stark. make it an easier option to do evil, but not the only option.

The poisons and diseases rules are a bit silly, but its like holy water boosted: the idea that some things are anathema to evil creatures is not a new one. Not very well realised though.

Neither Vile nor Exalted say CG is automatically worse than LG, or CE always worse than LE. In fact they state you can certainly have CG Exalted heroes. By RAW, you could have a CG Saint.

Some philosophers argue that lying is ALWAYS an evil act. At least Vile Darkness has that clause in description of lying.

Then of course you have the expanded sources: Exemplars of Evil, Champions of Ruin, which give different ways an evil character can see the world: "I Am Not Evil," "There Is No Evil", "Mad, I Tell You"

So, without expanding the rules definitions of alignment, just using PHB, you tend to end up with players who think "I detect evil" = "I can instantly kill it" and so on- the two sourcebooks, Vile and Exalted, are extremely useful fot DMs who want a more nuanced campaign than that.

as for liches: do good liches exist in rules? Yes? then option for players to research way of becoming a good lich should exist, and they should not be penalised for doing so.

serok42
2008-04-07, 07:40 AM
I'm not sure if they came over to 3rd edition from 2nd but there were the Balenorns which were good elven liches.

And I believe that in the Book of Exalted Deeds there is a type of good undead creatures. The name escapes me at the moment though. I want to say they are called Deathless but I did a Google search and came up with nothing like that.

Dannoth
2008-04-07, 07:45 AM
I'm going to have to go with yes.

Closet_Skeleton
2008-04-07, 08:09 AM
Just because negative energy isn't evil doesn't mean there aren't evil uses for it. For all we know, negative energy doesn't like being used to create undead and undead are a perversion of the negative energy plane.

It almost makes sense. Negative Energy isn't evil because it's just pure destructive force, but creating undead isn't destructive so it can't be a neutral use of negative energy.

"The process of becoming a lich is unspeakably evil and can be undertaken only by a willing character." Is pretty black and white when you look at it. Liches are evil because only an evil person would want to become a lich. The existance of Baelnorns and Archliches is irrelevant to a discussion about core liches since those are slightly differant creatures.

Starbuck_II
2008-04-07, 08:18 AM
Just because negative energy isn't evil doesn't mean there aren't evil uses for it. For all we know, negative energy doesn't like being used to create undead and undead are a perversion of the negative energy plane.

It almost makes sense. Negative Energy isn't evil because it's just pure destructive force, but creating undead isn't destructive so it can't be a neutral use of negative energy.

"The process of becoming a lich is unspeakably evil and can be undertaken only by a willing character." Is pretty black and white when you look at it. Liches are evil because only an evil person would want to become a lich. The existance of Baelnorns and Archliches is irrelevant to a discussion about core liches since those are slightly differant creatures.

So Positive Energy is pure non-destructive force, but can be used to kill babies (Holy Word)?

Dannoth
2008-04-07, 08:23 AM
It's not the type of power it is how you use it. :smallcool:

Transforming yourself into an undead immortal for example is probably hard to justify as good (hard not impossible).

Starbuck_II
2008-04-07, 08:31 AM
So is letting Divine goodness kill babies evil? Can you justify that?

hamishspence
2008-04-07, 08:33 AM
archliches and the Good lich from Libris mortis.

Not that different, more variants than truly different templates. basically, you could say that only people with truly unselfish reasons for wanting to make the transformation: protect others, serve as loyal guardians, etc, can access it.

harder question would be: can someone who is a core lich undergo enough moral change to make them Good aligned? if yes, then thats the example. Fiends are traditionally irredeemably evil, yet, WOTC, in their infinite wisdom :smallsmile: gave us the succubus paladin without bothering to remove the evil subtype. Which can be done with rituals in Savage Species.

4th ed seems to be going down path of Good Undead Exist. So, if Worlds and Monsters is correct, it is likely Good liches will exist.

Dannoth
2008-04-07, 08:50 AM
So is letting Divine goodness kill babies evil? Can you justify that?

Step 1 - Divine Knowledge - Baby will grow up to be Hitler v2.0 and can only be stopped now.

Step 2 - Power word: Slay Baby.

Step 3 - The ends justify the means.

hamishspence
2008-04-07, 08:58 AM
Not by Exalted Deeds, they don't. which is where it scored high. its not the best of arguments, unless every other method has been tried. and even then, people don't usually like it.

Dannoth
2008-04-07, 09:14 AM
>Deleted reference< PM for details

I'm not arguing that people will "like it". I am just saying a DM could have a reason to allow the smoting of babies as both Lawful and good.

hamishspence
2008-04-07, 09:23 AM
Thou shalt not bring up controversial topics! :smallwink:

I am really hoping that 4th ed definitions of Evil and good do not leave that sort of thing open. I think it would ignite a must bigger controvery than the reverse system of having Good mean seriously kind and brave goodness.

AmberVael
2008-04-07, 09:27 AM
I find it funny how people are talking about Positive energy as a force of healing and good, and yet when you stay on the positive energy plane too long you have a chance of exploding. :smalltongue:
Really, I have never thought of Positive and Negative energy as good and evil, or on any part of a moral compass. Both are merely tools- it is the use you put them to that is either good or evil.

The Rose Dragon
2008-04-07, 09:31 AM
And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.

Exodus 12

You might want to stay away from religious references, though. This forum has rules against that, you know.

Dannoth
2008-04-07, 09:44 AM
My apologies to anyone I offended. It was not my intent to upset anyone. I shall refrain from such forms of example in the future (or atleast keep them to private messages). Previous post has been edited for comformity with forum rules.

Probably best to let your DM decide what constitues good vs evil in his/her campaign as so much of it is arbitrary.

On another note:
I agree with Vael

hamishspence
2008-04-07, 09:52 AM
Chaos and law are harder to define. At least vile darknes and exalted deeds give you some idea, although both could do with an overhaul.

But D&D does give definitions, sample acts, applicability of intent, etc. It just needs to be done better.

And yes, negative and positive system is a little weird. As it stands, use does matter more than the energy itself. A cleric who cast inflict spells al the time can still be good. And a baddie who heals hordes of monsters all the time can still be evil. Apparently 4th ed is working them differently. No more Energy Planes. Shadow power source and Radiant power source now neutral. Good undead can be created, etc.

Calinero
2008-04-07, 10:01 AM
My understanding is that generally, anyone willing to undergo the mostly evil rituals required for lichhood is evil, or at least morally ambiguous. I recall mention of good lickes on wikipedia, however...I would check there.

RyanM
2008-04-07, 10:14 AM
I guess the best way to look at this is from an in-universe perspective. Alignment exists, and it's likely that most people don't even fully understand it. They just have to deal with it. Possibilities include:

1. Alignment is dictated by the gods, who also have some kind of pact amongst themselves to stick to a particular alignment. Or they invented alignments to best fit their own personalities and goals, and impose these alignments on mortals as a way of dividing them, and as an excuse to steal their souls.

2. Alignment is just part of the rules of physics for this universe, as fundamental as however magic works.

3. Alignment is the result of Planescape-style consensus reality. Most people believe that Good is X and Evil is Y, thus the universe makes it so.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-04-07, 10:31 AM
My understanding is that generally, anyone willing to undergo the mostly evil rituals required for lichhood is evil, or at least morally ambiguous. I recall mention of good lickes on wikipedia, however...I would check there.

If you read back, I quoted the AD&D 2nd ed. MM on good liches (which still exist), and mentioned baelnorns (good elven liches created to guard tombs, communities, etc.).

Check out the D&D 3.0 Monsters of Faerūn, the lich template at the end.

hewhosaysfish
2008-04-07, 10:38 AM
Why are Liches evil? Why are ogres crude and brutish? Why are dragons huge and terrfiying? Why are lizardmen scaly?

Illiterate Scribe
2008-04-07, 10:43 AM
Actually in this necromancy book i have it says to become a lich you have to have your container in still liquid blood of a virgin and an umbilical cord tied around it.

Easy;


don't have sex, but rather be your own blood donor
work in a maternity ward, and 'take supplies home' with you after work. That's chaotic, not evil.


Ta-dah, lich.

Thane of Fife
2008-04-07, 10:44 AM
I don't understand.

You're willing to accept that there is a magical item out there which takes a person's alignment and instantly reverses it, but not that the magical process to become a lich can make a person irrevocably evil. Why? What's the difference between the two?

Tweekinator
2008-04-07, 11:07 AM
I don't understand.

You're willing to accept that there is a magical item out there which takes a person's alignment and instantly reverses it, but not that the magical process to become a lich can make a person irrevocably evil. Why? What's the difference between the two?

Folks don't want to play a helm of making you opposite?

Cyclone231
2008-04-07, 06:48 PM
Also, people hate the Helm of Opposite Alignment because it railroads your character.

Ascension
2008-04-07, 07:38 PM
Using absolutes as a measure of alignment is appaling, and leads to obnoxious no-win situations.

I agree that they're obnoxious in an RPG, but if your DM is sadistic enough to make you deal with incredibly thorny alignment issues in the first place, shouldn't you be willing to recognize that there are some situations in which you literally can't win? Even in fantasy, there are some situations out there in which you just lose. Period. Whatever you do.

Now, more on topic... Of course it's evil. But so is anything that forestalls your inevitable end. All this magical healing business? Evil. If you were fated to heal, you would've made your stabilization roll. Don't give me this "I don't wanna roll a new character every session" crap. Don't even mention those blasted clerics. Why don't you just accept the death and decay of the multiverse like a normal person and join us as we hasten the coming fall? If you really want your body filled with negative energy, if you really want to embrace unlife, well, jump right in! We've got a gate to the negative energy plane in one of our citadels. I'm sure we could fix you right up. Soon we shall all be similarly unmade, and return to a state of sublime nothingness. Soon all shall sink and burn, and we shall all be happy. Soon.