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  1. - Top - End - #1
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    Default Why is creating undead Evil?

    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.

    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.
    Last edited by SangoProduction; 2020-09-19 at 09:24 PM.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    I posted about this elsewhere, but it probably is directly related to the game authors' spiritual and religious views, the authors wanting Undead minions to be primarily for villains, and because the idea of using corpses as slave labor makes certain people feel icky.
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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    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.
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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    Quote Originally Posted by Doctor Despair View Post
    Iirc creating undead adds negative energy to the world and disrupts the balance, so is universally evil
    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.
    Last edited by MaxiDuRaritry; 2020-09-19 at 10:25 PM.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    Quote Originally Posted by SangoProduction View Post
    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.
    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.

    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.

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

    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.
    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.
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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    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.
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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    Quote Originally Posted by Venger View Post
    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.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    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.)
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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    Quote Originally Posted by PoeticallyPsyco View Post
    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.
    Last edited by MaxiDuRaritry; 2020-09-20 at 12:00 AM.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxiDuRaritry View Post
    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".
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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxiDuRaritry View Post
    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.
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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    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.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    Quote Originally Posted by SangoProduction View Post
    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.
    Last edited by gogogome; 2020-09-20 at 01:23 AM.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    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.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    Quote Originally Posted by SangoProduction View Post
    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.
    Last edited by Yanagi; 2020-09-20 at 02:47 AM.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    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?

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    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 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.
    Last edited by Khedrac; 2020-09-20 at 03:17 AM.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    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.
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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    Quote Originally Posted by hamishspence View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by hamishspence View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by hamishspence View Post
    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.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    I may not be able to explain why creating undead is evil, but I know evil when I see it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Khedrac View Post
    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.
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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    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.
    Last edited by Unavenger; 2020-09-20 at 08:23 AM.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    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
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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    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?"
    Last edited by Ashtagon; 2020-09-20 at 10:23 AM.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    Quote Originally Posted by redking View Post
    I may not be able to explain why creating undead is evil, but I know evil when I see it.
    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.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    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.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    Quote Originally Posted by MaxiDuRaritry View Post
    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.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    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.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    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)


    Quote Originally Posted by the_tick_rules View Post
    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


    Quote Originally Posted by Saintheart View Post
    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?


    Quote Originally Posted by Yanagi View Post
    (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 ate their criminals


    Quote Originally Posted by MaxiDuRaritry View Post
    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
    Last edited by ShurikVch; 2020-09-20 at 02:23 PM.

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    Default Re: Why is creating undead Evil?

    Quote Originally Posted by ShurikVch View Post
    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.

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