Why is creating undead Evil?

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And Tyr's "undead paladin" Miltiades had a purpose - fulfil the task he couldn't fulfil in life. After he fulfils it, Tyr lets him pass on to the afterlife - at least till Tyr needs him again.

The way archliches respond to the negative energy of a Rebuke attempt - it can Turn them, or even Destroy them if the rebuker is high enough level - is identical to the way Deathless respond to that Rebuke attempt.

Hence the theory that they're only undead because they're early 3.0 - had they been properly updated into the context of 3.5's BOED, they'd be Deathless.


If you do go by RAW though - you need to be able to explain why they're so vulnerable to negative energy, at least in that particular form. Possibly they're suffused with holy energy, and a Rebuke Undead attempt, being a mix of unholy energy and negative energy, disrupts it.

Again, no one said that it forced an alignment change. Just that -by the RAW- it is, immutably, an Evil act to do it.

"One of the most heinous crimes that can be committed" is somewhat in alignment-change territory. Just like destroying souls, which is described as something that only evil people are ever willing to do.

Hence people complaining that a Good undead must destroy themselves or change alignment to Neutral or Evil, if Monte Cook's words are taken literally.

Incidentally, I've been thinking about where to locate the evil - on the act of creating undead, or on the existence of those undead? And I think I prefer the former. Benefits:
* You can have non-evil undead who aren't obligated to destroy themselves.
* Less possible to circumvent.