Why is creating undead Evil?

[icefractal]

This thread has brought up some holes with the previous idea I had, so I was thinking about it and have a related one that I think solves those.

This is, again, in the context that you want undeath to be a bad thing as part of the setting. If you don't, then no additional explanation is needed - just say "Undead aren't inherently evil, they just have a bad reputation because many of the naturally occurring ones are evil" and remove the [Evil] descriptor from the spells.

So, assuming the goals of:
1) Have undeath be evil, as part of the setting.
2) Not have necro-punk socities as the dominant ones (absent negative factors, they have a lot of advantages).

The key is spontaneously occurring undead. In a world with no undead, there wouldn't be any of these.
The more undead exist, the higher the odds of spontaneous animation.
This falls off with distance, so it technically extends through the whole plane but is much stronger at the source.
Since spontaneous undead also count for this, it can lead to a runaway chain reaction.
Usually this is self-damping because you run out of living creatures in the vicinity to become undead.
Nightshades are the doomsday scenario.
They're not made from living creatures, they're undeath applied to the planar substance itself.
If the undeath factor gets high enough to spontaneously create Nightshades, there's nothing to stop it without outside intervention.
If unopposed, this will eventually spread until most living things die, none can be born, and the plane flips to negative aligned.

Results:
Undead create a problem by existing, regardless of their personal actions.
That said, short-lived undead are much less of a problem, and a lone undead not near many people - while not harmless - isn't that bad and could be argued as a net positive if they're doing good things.
Necro-topias work fine for a while, then the undeath factor gets high enough to spawn Shadows and such which can easily wipe out your living "seed stock".
This can be mitigated by proper security measures, but then you eventually reach Nightshade level.
"To this end, nightshades seek nothing less than the annihilation of all that is, that was, and that will be" - so probably not easy to work with, and they're all high-CR.
And since at that point you're actively spreading a world-ending threat, expect outside interference.

[noob]

This thread has brought up some holes with the previous idea I had, so I was thinking about it and have a related one that I think solves those.

This is, again, in the context that you want undeath to be a bad thing as part of the setting. If you don't, then no additional explanation is needed - just say "Undead aren't inherently evil, they just have a bad reputation because many of the naturally occurring ones are evil" and remove the [Evil] descriptor from the spells.

So, assuming the goals of:
1) Have undeath be evil, as part of the setting.
2) Not have necro-punk socities as the dominant ones (absent negative factors, they have a lot of advantages).

The key is spontaneously occurring undead. In a world with no undead, there wouldn't be any of these.
The more undead exist, the higher the odds of spontaneous animation.
This falls off with distance, so it technically extends through the whole plane but is much stronger at the source.
Since spontaneous undead also count for this, it can lead to a runaway chain reaction.
Usually this is self-damping because you run out of living creatures in the vicinity to become undead.
Nightshades are the doomsday scenario.
They're not made from living creatures, they're undeath applied to the planar substance itself.
If the undeath factor gets high enough to spontaneously create Nightshades, there's nothing to stop it without outside intervention.
If unopposed, this will eventually spread until most living things die, none can be born, and the plane flips to negative aligned.

Results:
Undead create a problem by existing, regardless of their personal actions.
That said, short-lived undead are much less of a problem, and a lone undead not near many people - while not harmless - isn't that bad and could be argued as a net positive if they're doing good things.
Necro-topias work fine for a while, then the undeath factor gets high enough to spawn Shadows and such which can easily wipe out your living "seed stock".
This can be mitigated by proper security measures, but then you eventually reach Nightshade level.
"To this end, nightshades seek nothing less than the annihilation of all that is, that was, and that will be" - so probably not easy to work with, and they're all high-CR.
And since at that point you're actively spreading a world-ending threat, expect outside interference.

Does not matter if you already convinced all the living people to become undead or if doing that in the negative energy plane.
It is wrong to make something be evil because of the potential consequences in one specific situation (When you cast it on the material plane without having already convinced all the living to become undead)
And maybe the undead annihilation of an hellish plane is a good thing due to how screwed the dnd morality of "killing bad people is good" is.
Also it encourages haunt shifting hundreds of billions of the undead of the negative energy plane in order to make an hand held weapon of planar tainting then plane hopping and magically turning other planes in negative dominant planes.
If getting rid of the taint is hard the job of high level(high enough to use plane shift) pro undead liches is easy: they just have to stay in the negative plane until they haunt shift enough undead.
for getting one hundred billion haunt shifted undead assuming a level of 13 and an int of 22(hard to go below as a lich with an headband of intellect) you would need less than 40000000 years.
But it grows much faster if the lich adventure some more and pick up ice assassin.

[NigelWalmsley]

Not have necro-punk socities as the dominant ones (absent negative factors, they have a lot of advantages).

It seems like it would be easier to attack this directly. Just declare that the knowledge of necromancy is rare or something.

[Quertus]

Ok, cool. So you've bolded what a mindless skeleton will do while under control. You have, however, failed to bold the last line, which directly contradicts your second point about the "-" in all diet columns, as well as undermines your idea that they're perfect little . Here's the part you failed to bold:

That seems pretty in-line with the theory I discussed above. They consume/destroy/etc until they themselves are destroyed, because that's what they're created to do. They are created purely to destroy, which seems pretty much spot on supported by the idea that they are created using a connection to the negative energy plane, a plane that exists to consume, destroy, etc.

Actually, in Necropunk, they are created to work. The point of the quote, I believe (which was "A skeleton attacks until destroyed, for that is what it was created to do.") is that skeletons obey orders without question, and do not worry about things like failed morale checks.

That, IMO, applies only to a controlled Skeleton, not an uncontrolled one. If a player frees a skeleton of their control, to make room for a better, more powerful one - what happens?

The "it does nothing whatsoever, not even if it's attacked" explanation, doesn't really work.

Citation *strongly* needed. IME, it works just fine.

Now, where you may have a point is *spontaneous* skeletons. Anything else, and I think you've gone outside the realm of RAW.

[Psyren]

It seems like it would be easier to attack this directly. Just declare that the knowledge of necromancy is rare or something.

This idea doesn't work in many settings though, including every single 1st-party published one.

The key is spontaneously occurring undead. In a world with no undead, there wouldn't be any of these.

I think part of this depends on how you define "spontaneous." Consider that almost every published setting did have zero undead at some point in its history (see Faerun, Golarion etc.) This typically changed when a god of death or undeath emerged to marshal such forces and bring a whole boatload of undead into being along with them. It's difficult to tell whether deities like Urgathoa or Moander or Nerull or Jergal intentionally introduced undead to the world or whether they simply sprang up in their wake, but however it happened, such generation could fit at least one definition of spontaneous (i.e. brought into being by forces beyond mortal control).

Actually, in Necropunk, they are created to work. The point of the quote, I believe (which was "A skeleton attacks until destroyed, for that is what it was created to do.") is that skeletons obey orders without question, and do not worry about things like failed morale checks.

His point is that the "pure RAW" sword cuts both ways. Hanging everything on the bit of text that supports your view of skeletons/zombies and ignoring all the text (both in their entry and elsewhere) that doesn't, is hypocritical.

[JusticeZero]

"Objective morality" is incoherent. What does it mean for something to be "objectively Good" or "objectively Evil"? If the rules say that killing zombies is "objectively Good" does that mean characters can't think it's wrong?

No, but it would mean that someone raised to think it was morally wrong who nonetheless killed a lot of zombies for Teh Evulz would ping as "Good" when the detect spells come out. It means that regardless of what the character thinks, the laws of physics have specific ideas about what is right or wrong burned in, which can be tested through the scientific method impartially and verified independently. Good and evil, in D&D, is a physical property like mass, charge, or pH. In an objective morality universe, doing certain actions always has predictable effects on that property regardless of personal views or culture.
Objectively, a lot of things are true that have subjective disagreement. This is a thing where the argument goes "But creating skeletons does (long list of arguments)!" and the other side says "Yes, but if you do it, you will start to detect as Evil, eventually VERY Evil, and if we track your soul after death, it will go to an Evil plane regardless of anything else. Which might be situationally absurd and unsatisfying, but it's going to happen regardless."

[NigelWalmsley]

This idea doesn't work in many settings though, including every single 1st-party published one.

Yes, most published settings don't have any reason why none of the setting-breaking exploits that exist in the rules have happened. As far as I can tell, this is because the designers assume that if you're too lazy to write your own setting, you're also too lazy to poke holes in theirs.

Objectively, a lot of things are true that have subjective disagreement. This is a thing where the argument goes "But creating skeletons does (long list of arguments)!" and the other side says "Yes, but if you do it, you will start to detect as Evil, eventually VERY Evil, and if we track your soul after death, it will go to an Evil plane regardless of anything else. Which might be situationally absurd and unsatisfying, but it's going to happen regardless."

And that's not the same as morality. If you drop a rock, it will fall. That's true no matter how many arguments you make that it would be better if the rock didn't fall. But that doesn't mean the universe is morally in favor of the rock being on the ground instead of not. Just using moral terms for physical forces doesn't suddenly make them moral. The truth claim of "what happens to your soul when you die if you do X" is orthogonal to the moral question of "is X the right thing to do". It could be relevant, if what will happen to your soul is particularly good or bad (and you accept a broadly utilitarian moral framework), but it doesn't inherently change the answer.

[Troacctid]

Yes, most published settings don't have any reason why none of the setting-breaking exploits that exist in the rules have happened. As far as I can tell, this is because the designers assume that if you're too lazy to write your own setting, you're also too lazy to poke holes in theirs.

Yet another reason why Eberron is the best published setting in D&D 3.5!

[Psyren]

Yes, most published settings don't have any reason why none of the setting-breaking exploits that exist in the rules have happened. As far as I can tell, this is because the designers assume that if you're too lazy to write your own setting, you're also too lazy to poke holes in theirs.

Except the designers did write several reasons why. Though I suppose people who are too lazy to read up on what those are won't notice them anyway

Yet another reason why Eberron is the best published setting in D&D 3.5!

It's worth noting that animate dead is still an evil act in Eberron, and doing so routinely will still change your alignment (ECS 35) - it's just that that alignment change won't necessarily affect your standing with any church or faith. However, if your faith is one that doesn't like you creating a bunch of undead, like the Silver Flame (or you inhabit an area that is under their control), you might be ejected or persecuted on those grounds.

[JusticeZero]

The truth claim of "what happens to your soul when you die if you do X" is orthogonal to the moral question of "is X the right thing to do".

Correct. "Is it morally wrong to create undead?" is actually not the same question as "Is creating undead [Evil]?" System wise, the latter is true, and the former is often irrelevant as a result. The laws of the universe dictate that raising the undead is [Evil]. That supercedes the moral question, because the most ethically justified necromancer is still going to be surrounded by demons and/or devils when they die regardless of how morally right they were.

[Segev]

Correct. "Is it morally wrong to create undead?" is actually not the same question as "Is creating undead [Evil]?" System wise, the latter is true, and the former is often irrelevant as a result. The laws of the universe dictate that raising the undead is [Evil]. That supercedes the moral question, because the most ethically justified necromancer is still going to be surrounded by demons and/or devils when they die regardless of how morally right they were.

Technically, it is the same thing, if objective morality is objective morality. That's one reason why I really dislike the "team jerseys" approach to objective morality: it undermines the entire concept and makes it inherently incoherent. It allows you to have a Balor who is by definition chaotic evil who runs the most altruistic, generous, and technically savvy pro-bono law firm defending the innocent from false accusations and helping bring to justice criminals who otherwise would escape the law by undermining their perfidious efforts to subborn the law to their own ends. But he's chaotic evil, guys, even though he's extremely trustworthy and entirely kind and generous. Because he's wearing the Team Evil and Team Chaos jerseys as part of his creature type.

For objective morality to make coherent sense, that which is objectively aligned must be inherently tied to things which are at least near-universally agreed to be aligned that way. For instance, we all agree that killing is generally bad, and that under most circumstances, it's probably murder. There are all sorts of philosophy student questions and scenarios to ask "the hard questions," e.g. trolley problems, to muddy it up and make for situations where killing is morally acceptable, or at least to raise the question whether it is or not.

The difficulty with Team Jersey approaches to objective ethics and morality is that applying it arbitrarily manufactures MORE "muddy" situations, rather than clarifying the few that already exist. If it's "always good" to kill vampires (because they're always evil), then a vampire that is not hurting anybody, only drinks animal blood (or only takes blood donations from those who voluntarily give/trade it, without causing permanent harm to the donors), and is a good father-figure to his adopted family and possibly the noble protector of his town from a lantern archon-led bandit force that pillages and rapes (but is still doing good because they're following a lantern archon, and following archons is always good!)... that's incoherent to our definitions of "good" and "evil" in general.

When designing objective morality, you CAN use it to plaster over some of the sticky questions where you'd legitimately get debate. Objective morality that is, for instance, "saving more lives is always better than saving fewer, and you cannot know the future beyond immediately-predictable results," would resolve most trolley problems as "it's good to do the thing that saves most lives." Setting it as, "It's always wrong to willfully take an innocent life," instead, means that the trolley operator should do nothing. We can debate all we want IRL about these "objective morals," but you can use a setting's "objective morality" to resolve those if you want. (I don't want to, but you could.)

Which brings us back to animate dead and being evil to cast it. I prefer there to be, like 3e's description of lichdom, some definitely-evil act that is a required part of casting the spell. Either as the ritual action, or as an effect of doing the animation.

As a reasonably good example of the former, take the resurrection ritual for Voldemort in the Harry Potter series: "Blood of the enemy, unwillingly taken," is one of the requirements. The fact that it must be unwillingly taken from an enemy - that is, as shown in the story, the enemy must be victimized by having it taken from him - makes it evil. (Again, we could construct scenarios to muddy this, but you can see where I'm going with this.)

Slaymates only arise from the corpses of children who were killed by parental/guardian betrayal, abandonment, or malicious neglect. There is no good aligned way to orchestrate the creation of such corpses. A necromancer who wants to arrange for some of these to arise would need to find parents or guardians willing to betray, abandon, or otherwise maliciously neglect the children unto death. At least evil on his part, he could search around for stories of such and find the corpses and maybe use create undead, or otherwise hope that they spontaneously arise. But there's no way to create Slaymates without definite evil, since there's no way to justify betrayal, abandonment, or malicious neglect of a child by the child's guardian.

That is the kind of element I want to see in animate dead, either in its casting or the necessary results of the process, to justify its "evil" tag.

[Bohandas]

This thread has brought up some holes with the previous idea I had, so I was thinking about it and have a related one that I think solves those.

This is, again, in the context that you want undeath to be a bad thing as part of the setting. If you don't, then no additional explanation is needed - just say "Undead aren't inherently evil, they just have a bad reputation because many of the naturally occurring ones are evil" and remove the [Evil] descriptor from the spells.

So, assuming the goals of:
1) Have undeath be evil, as part of the setting.
2) Not have necro-punk socities as the dominant ones (absent negative factors, they have a lot of advantages).

The key is spontaneously occurring undead. In a world with no undead, there wouldn't be any of these.
The more undead exist, the higher the odds of spontaneous animation.
This falls off with distance, so it technically extends through the whole plane but is much stronger at the source.
Since spontaneous undead also count for this, it can lead to a runaway chain reaction.
Usually this is self-damping because you run out of living creatures in the vicinity to become undead.
Nightshades are the doomsday scenario.
They're not made from living creatures, they're undeath applied to the planar substance itself.
If the undeath factor gets high enough to spontaneously create Nightshades, there's nothing to stop it without outside intervention.
If unopposed, this will eventually spread until most living things die, none can be born, and the plane flips to negative aligned.

Results:
Undead create a problem by existing, regardless of their personal actions.
That said, short-lived undead are much less of a problem, and a lone undead not near many people - while not harmless - isn't that bad and could be argued as a net positive if they're doing good things.
Necro-topias work fine for a while, then the undeath factor gets high enough to spawn Shadows and such which can easily wipe out your living "seed stock".
This can be mitigated by proper security measures, but then you eventually reach Nightshade level.
"To this end, nightshades seek nothing less than the annihilation of all that is, that was, and that will be" - so probably not easy to work with, and they're all high-CR.
And since at that point you're actively spreading a world-ending threat, expect outside interference.

IIRC nightshades arise from dead outsiders, and thus are going to be rare on the material plane regardless. And the same goes for bloodfiends

[Segev]

IIRC nightshades arise from dead outsiders, and thus are going to be rare on the material plane regardless. And the same goes for bloodfiends

Nightshades are...iffy on their classification as "undead." They're really more "negative energy elementals." They arise from the Negative Energy Plane.

Visages are the impossible undead that arise from outsiders (who shouldn't be able to be undead).

[Psyren]

Slaymates only arise from the corpses of children who were killed by parental/guardian betrayal, abandonment, or malicious neglect. There is no good aligned way to orchestrate the creation of such corpses. A necromancer who wants to arrange for some of these to arise would need to find parents or guardians willing to betray, abandon, or otherwise maliciously neglect the children unto death. At least evil on his part, he could search around for stories of such and find the corpses and maybe use create undead, or otherwise hope that they spontaneously arise. But there's no way to create Slaymates without definite evil, since there's no way to justify betrayal, abandonment, or malicious neglect of a child by the child's guardian.

That is the kind of element I want to see in animate dead, either in its casting or the necessary results of the process, to justify its "evil" tag.

The thing is though, not every neglected/abandoned child becomes a Slaymate. But per LM, casting enough animate deads means that more of those children will become Slaymates. If you know about that and cast animate dead anyway, you're at best uncaring - both for the potential victims of any net new slaymates that arise spontaneously as a result of your actions, and for the welfare of the children who become slaymates themselves.

[Bohandas]

Nightshades are...iffy on their classification as "undead." They're really more "negative energy elementals." They arise from the Negative Energy Plane.

Visages are the impossible undead that arise from outsiders (who shouldn't be able to be undead).

Dragon #336 page 45 says that they are the result of dead fiends being exposed to negative energy

[Segev]

The thing is though, not every neglected/abandoned child becomes a Slaymate. But per LM, casting enough animate deads means that more of those children will become Slaymates. If you know about that and cast animate dead anyway, you're at best uncaring - both for the potential victims of any net new slaymates that arise spontaneously as a result of your actions, and for the welfare of the children who become slaymates themselves.

That's beside the point. I still think the "undead pollution" thing is stupid. But I do like that to make Slaymates deliberately takes definitely-evil action. (I could construct a way for a good person to be able to make them if Slaymates aren't miserable in their existence; they'd need to find a neglect victim they didn't arrange for.)

But something along the lines of the requirements to make a Slaymate are the kind of "definitely evil" acts I want to see be part of animate dead's casting.

Dragon #336 page 45 says that they are the result of dead fiends being exposed to negative energy

Huh, interesting. Not something I like as lore, but interesting.

[Psyren]

That's beside the point. I still think the "undead pollution" thing is stupid. But I do like that to make Slaymates deliberately takes definitely-evil action. (I could construct a way for a good person to be able to make them if Slaymates aren't miserable in their existence; they'd need to find a neglect victim they didn't arrange for.)

But something along the lines of the requirements to make a Slaymate are the kind of "definitely evil" acts I want to see be part of animate dead's casting.

It's not besides the point. I get it, you want the material component for animate dead to be gutting a live puppy or something overt like that, and nothing less will make the tag feel satisfying for you. But that kind of thing is more the province of [Vile] magic than [evil] magic, and I would argue that what Voldemort did to Harry was much closer to the [Vile] end of the spectrum. A magic system should have room for both blatant evil and the comparatively milder, more insidious-if-used-repeatedly kind. Animate Dead is the latter.

[JusticeZero]

Technically, it is the same thing, if objective morality is objective morality. That's one reason why I really dislike the "team jerseys" approach to objective morality: it undermines the entire concept and makes it inherently incoherent.

Which is fair. I for one prefer a muddy "team jersey" approach. For most situations, the "jersey" will match anyway, because it approximates well, but I like that murkiness of people needing to pause and use their own judgment in a setting where doing what is [Good] isn't always the same as doing what is right.

For objective morality to make coherent sense, that which is objectively aligned must be inherently tied to things which are at least near-universally agreed to be aligned that way. For instance, we all agree that killing is generally bad, and that under most circumstances, it's probably murder.

Sure. My alignment systems, when I use them, use cases that are generally assumed true. The axioms aren't fool-proof, and there are edge cases like the hero vampire vs. the archon bandits. The alignment follows the alignment system regardless of the morality of the edge case. This is explicitly unjust, and comparable to the "raw deal" described by Redcloak on the comic. The universe is not a fair or just construction. We are all the victims of physics.

[Segev]

It's not besides the point. I get it, you want the material component for animate dead to be gutting a live puppy or something overt like that, and nothing less will make the tag feel satisfying for you. But that kind of thing is more the province of [Vile] magic than [evil] magic, and I would argue that what Voldemort did to Harry was much closer to the [Vile] end of the spectrum. A magic system should have room for both blatant evil and the comparatively milder, more insidious-if-used-repeatedly kind. Animate Dead is the latter.

Weirdly, I actually view it in reverse: if something is going to be [Vile], I'm more okay with it being because it just pours pure evil into the world, probably because the vile spells all are rather explicitly tapping into Lower Planar power.

I might be persuaded to accept the "eh, it's evil because of some vague pollution thing" if I didn't also have a visceral "ugh, no" reaction to the notion that animate dead uses lower planar energy. It uses negative energy.

And I don't even need it to be "it's sacrificing puppies." I prefer it be subtle, maybe not knowable to every caster. But I don't like it being "evil pollution" because I dislike the notion that you can just research a "clean up the evil pollution" spell to mitigate it. If "research a different spell" can work to make it not-evil, I also want it to not really be making skeletons (as defined by being undead reanimated corpses) anymore. (Animate objects, for instance, makes an animated object out of the corpse, but a lot of laymen wouldn't know the difference as they were attacked by them.)

But - and no, this isn't quite "good enough" for me, but it's the best I've got right now - as a possibility, what if animating the dead rips part of the soul away from its afterlife? Not the whole thing, but perhaps enough of it that you're left with a petitioner and the animus, with the petitioner being that vaguely-mindless thing described in some D&D books, with little memory of its life and just this aching sense of something missing that leads it to eventually merge with the outer plane it's on. Properly laying the dead to rest sends the whole soul to the afterlife, where it can enjoy its eternal reward or otherwise advance as an outsider of that plane. But animating the corpse rips that out of them. Neither half is sentient.

Almost explains why you can't raise the dead while a corpse is animate, too: the part of the spirit that would give life to the body is currently elsewhere. (Maybe raise dead can be made to work if you can properly lay the destroyed undead to rest again. Maybe it can't because the two spirit-bits can't find each other after it's been too long.)

Make this a painful process, too, and maybe the reason you're spending black onyx is because you're bribing the psychopomps that ferry souls to the afterlife to split off the animus portion and bring it back to you.

Which is fair. I for one prefer a muddy "team jersey" approach. For most situations, the "jersey" will match anyway, because it approximates well, but I like that murkiness of people needing to pause and use their own judgment in a setting where doing what is [Good] isn't always the same as doing what is right.

Sure. My alignment systems, when I use them, use cases that are generally assumed true. The axioms aren't fool-proof, and there are edge cases like the hero vampire vs. the archon bandits. The alignment follows the alignment system regardless of the morality of the edge case. This is explicitly unjust, and comparable to the "raw deal" described by Redcloak on the comic. The universe is not a fair or just construction. We are all the victims of physics.

Fair enough on a "to each their own" level. I actively dislike this, because what is good, to me, should also always be what's right. It can be complicated to work out, and maybe there are multiple "right" and "good" choices that are nevertheless not fully satisfying because there's no "perfect" solution, but I strongly dislike any system of morality where you can say, "I am doing evil, but it's the right thing to do."

It's like saying "I am painting this house purple, but that makes the house orange."

[Psyren]

And I don't even need it to be "it's sacrificing puppies." I prefer it be subtle, maybe not knowable to every caster. But I don't like it being "evil pollution" because I dislike the notion that you can just research a "clean up the evil pollution" spell to mitigate it.

But there is no such spell, so I don't know where that notion is even coming from. And if you're going to allow researching custom spells to "clean up the pollution" - you could research custom anything to overcome the cosmology that way, so it's a non-argument. You could custom research "Elminster's Safe Undead Creation" with no tag at all, or "Animate Deathless," or allow an unsafe wish to fix all Necromancy forever etc.

But - and no, this isn't quite "good enough" for me, but it's the best I've got right now - as a possibility, what if animating the dead rips part of the soul away from its afterlife? Not the whole thing, but perhaps enough of it that you're left with a petitioner and the animus, with the petitioner being that vaguely-mindless thing described in some D&D books, with little memory of its life and just this aching sense of something missing that leads it to eventually merge with the outer plane it's on. Properly laying the dead to rest sends the whole soul to the afterlife, where it can enjoy its eternal reward or otherwise advance as an outsider of that plane. But animating the corpse rips that out of them. Neither half is sentient.

How would this work for souls that have already passed on or dissipated? Necromancers can animate skeletons that are decades, centuries, or even millennia old. Would Roy's mom be having a happy day on the Mountain making Mom-balaya and then one day bam, she's in some form of painful Limbo or her afterlife is wracked with a sense of loss simply because a necromancer got into the graveyard where her remains happen to be? That seems a bit crapsack even by D&D standards.

[Bohandas]

But there is no such spell, so I don't know where that notion is even coming from. And if you're going to allow researching custom spells to "clean up the pollution" - you could research custom anything to overcome the cosmology that way, so it's a non-argument. You could custom research "Elminster's Safe Undead Creation" with no tag at all, or "Animate Deathless," or allow an unsafe wish to fix all Necromancy forever etc.

If we assume that the effect of negative energy pollution is higher rate of spontaneous creation of uncontrolled undead (which seems to be the main working theory here?) than the spells to counter it would be Consecrate or Hallow

[Quertus]

The thing is though, not every neglected/abandoned child becomes a Slaymate. But per LM, casting enough animate deads means that more of those children will become Slaymates. If you know about that and cast animate dead anyway, you're at best uncaring - both for the potential victims of any net new slaymates that arise spontaneously as a result of your actions, and for the welfare of the children who become slaymates themselves.

You keep saying that. Others have said that, while LM claims to be the authority, it authoritatively says that there is not an answer, and only gives theories on how it could work.

Do you dispute this summary of what LM says?

[Segev]

But there is no such spell, so I don't know where that notion is even coming from. And if you're going to allow researching custom spells to "clean up the pollution" - you could research custom anything to overcome the cosmology that way, so it's a non-argument. You could custom research "Elminster's Safe Undead Creation" with no tag at all, or "Animate Deathless," or allow an unsafe wish to fix all Necromancy forever etc.

I think you missed my point. But fine, I'll just concede this rather than discuss it further: no custom spells. Fine.

Still an explanation I find stupid, in the sense of being unsatisfying and clumsy. "It's evil because, uh.... it cascades, but not in any measurable or usable way, and not in any way that makes anybody doing it a bad person except because we're going tsk-tsk at them."

How would this work for souls that have already passed on or dissipated? Necromancers can animate skeletons that are decades, centuries, or even millennia old. Would Roy's mom be having a happy day on the Mountain making Mom-balaya and then one day bam, she's in some form of painful Limbo or her afterlife is wracked with a sense of loss simply because a necromancer got into the graveyard where her remains happen to be? That seems a bit crapsack even by D&D standards.

Sounds like an actually-evil act, now doesn't it?

But, if that's unsatisfying, perhaps it can use any old animus, as long as its roughly the right Type and thus "knows" how to move that kind of body. This does mean that there's a re-opened question of why it interferes with raise dead based on the body being animated, though.

Like I said, it's not solid enough that I'd pitch it as an acceptable solution, yet. But yeah, certainly the scenario you outlined is pretty darned evil.

Combine it with a theory I have on advancing as an outsider, and doing it to longer-dead corpses would lead merely to paining outsiders, not crippling them. But also has its own issues, which I can go into if you like, but will leave off here as I acknowledge it's still not a solid mechanism.

[Psyren]

If we assume that the effect of negative energy pollution is higher rate of spontaneous creation of uncontrolled undead (which seems to be the main working theory here?) than the spells to counter it would be Consecrate or Hallow

Neither of those spells has that effect, unless you're houseruling, in which case see the rest of my post.

Sounds like an actually-evil act, now doesn't it?

It sounds like a setting without a proper cosmology or gods at all. If there's one thing an afterlife needs to be (at least most of the time), it's an ending.

It's a moot point in any event unless you're talking about a custom setting - no D&D or Pathfinder setting causes making a skeleton to impact a petitioner or soul that has passed on. The closest I can think of is something like PF's Judgement Undone, a 9th-level spell.

You keep saying that. Others have said that, while LM claims to be the authority, it authoritatively says that there is not an answer, and only gives theories on how it could work.

Do you dispute this summary of what LM says?

1) Gravity is a theory too; and while you can yell that fact at the ground as you're plummeting towards it, that won't make the fall any softer.
2) None of the theories posited in that section of LM are contradictory in any way - they could ALL be true.

[NigelWalmsley]

Neither of those spells has that effect, unless you're houseruling, in which case see the rest of my post.

And unless you're houseruling, Animate Dead doesn't cause spontaneous undead.

[Bohandas]

Neither of those spells has that effect, unless you're houseruling, in which case see the rest of my post.

They both prevent undead from arising within their area of effect

The spell description says "Undead cannot be created within or summoned into a consecrated area." and "created" is not italacized. If it was italacized you'v have an argument that it referred to blocking create undead specifically, but it's not. I take it to mean that they can't be created by any means

[Psyren]

And unless you're houseruling, Animate Dead doesn't cause spontaneous undead.

Libris Mortis is a first-party book, no houserule needed.
And if you dismiss the explanation in it, it's still evil by RAW, just with no reason now.

They both prevent undead from arising within their area of effect

The spell description says "Undead cannot be created within or summoned into a consecrated area." and "created" is not italacized. If it was italacized you'v have an argument that it referred to blocking create undead specifically, but it's not. I take it to mean that they can't be created by any means

What does that have to do with mitigating the negative impact of undead that are created elsewhere?

[Segev]

D&D is rather inconsistent about the fate of those who go to the afterlife, with petitioners sometimes being actually the people they were in life going to their final reward, and other times being pale shadows with no memory of who they once were, and sometimes people do become fiends or celestials or the ethical equivalents. There's plenty of room for theorizing what causes these discrepancies.

And I did say it wasn't perfect or even complete. My point is, it's pretty darned evil, it's definitely an evil the caster is doing by casting the spell, and it's largely transparent to the caster who is (or wants to be) ignorant of it.

It is considerably better at making it an actual moral stain to cast than making it the magical equivalent of grinding your cigarette butt out on the ground and leaving it there. (And believe me, I think that's a disgusting thing people do and hate finding the litter anywhere.)

[NigelWalmsley]

Libris Mortis is a first-party book, no houserule needed.

Yes, but since it doesn't define anything, any answer for how many spontaneous undead you get is a houserule. As long as one spontaneous undead rises between now and the heat death of the universe (or however D&Dland meets its ultimate end), the RAW is fulfilled. Any specific number or timeline you pick is a houserule. One guided by RAW, but a houserule nonetheless.

And if you dismiss the explanation in it, it's still evil by RAW, just with no reason now.

Sure, but Fell Drain Acid Splash isn't.

What does that have to do with mitigating the negative impact of undead that are created elsewhere?

Well, you could Hallow those places. Or, frankly, just go kill the undead. Until you're willing to declare everyone who owns a car Evil, mitigating the impact of spontaneous undead by killing them (or even by doing something else that's Good) is a strategy that ends up non-Evil.

[Troacctid]

Sure, but Fell Drain Acid Splash isn't.

It is, actually, if you use it to generate wights. Creation of evil undead is explicitly an evil act.