Why is creating undead Evil?

[RedMage125]

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.

You're leaving RAW territory here and supposing at RAI. I don't quite know what you're saying vis a vis the point. At least as far as a RAW discussion.

"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.

Well, that's not explicit in the RAW, so...

The fact Undead is always detected by Detect Evil is the obvious failure of game-design: why to have Detect Undead then?

You can't have a RAW discussion when one person thinks "what the RAW says is in error and what I say is correct". That line of discussion is going nowhere.

The RAW as they exist are coherent. Animating undead is an evil act. Evil magic is a part of their physical makeup. As evil is part of their physiology, the rules regarding creatures to whom evil is inherent to their nature supersedes the rules regarding mindless beings being incapable of having an alignment. Thus mindless undead still radiate evil, and are subject to damage from holy spells and Smite Evil.

That's is consistent and coherent. Not a "failure of game design".

No, nothing indicates it.
Besides, Nocturnus is kinda canon - because Necropolitans are from it

Except the opening of that paragraph "in some extraordinary settings", thus implying that everything that follows is a deviation from "ordinary" setting rules.

Resurrection (or Reincarnate) is required only "some small portion of the creature’s body" - the "remaining part" is a viable target to Revive Undead.

I suppose that's true. Fair point. But if the resurrected person was to later die, they still have a full, viable corpse from which to be raised.

Soul is absolutely not trapped in the Zombie, because:

1. Magic Jar: "Only sentient undead creatures have, or are, souls."
2. Putrefaction spell (Dragon #300): "When the victim dies, his body immediately animates as a zombie under the control of the caster. Additionally, the victim's soul transforms into a ghost that cannot move more than 30 feet from the caster."

And yet if you are killed, your hand chopped of to be used for Resurrection, and let's say the rest of your body is turned into a zombie before your friends get that Resurrection. That zombie is placed somewhere that is cannot be located with divination, or summoned, or located physically (say, a lead lined coffin with dimensional-anchor and nondetection permanently cast on it, dropped into the ocean), then no mortal magic in the game can bring you back to life. Resurrection will not make a new body from the hand, True Resurrection will not make you a new body.

Again, there is SOME connection. That is all I am saying. That is RAW.