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.

Quote Originally Posted by Doctor Despair View Post
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.

Quote Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley View Post
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.

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- 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.