Why is creating undead Evil?

[mashlagoo1982]

It's also tricky because we have to answer "If casting a spell that uses lifeforce without consent is [Evil], then why isn't X [Evil]?"

That is probably where my line of thought breaks down.

There are several spells I would consider to be deserving of the Evil descriptor, but the game does not have them labeled as such.

Right off, any spell that influences the mind of a target I would consider [Evil] unless the target consents.
Basically, if a Lawful Neutral deity would say "That's messed up and probably evil..." to the common and expected purpose of a spell, that spell would get the Evil descriptor.

Edit: Yeah, this doesn't really work. I need to think on it more.

Like, should Charming a goblin be considered Evil vs just Fireballing a goblin... should they both be?
Charming messes with their mind while Fireball kills them.

Ideally a character would have reasonable justification for either action.
Maybe it is because Charm doesn't really have any alternative uses besides messing with a target's mind?
Fireball, while often used for killing a target, often is used for other purposes.

[Doctor Despair]

That's why I like the idea that, the way the spell is designed, it specifically uses the cosmic force of Evil as a power source fluff-wise. If you remove it when you research a new version of the spell, the spell gets objectively weaker in some way, as it now lacks that power source (justifying having the tag).

[mashlagoo1982]

That's why I like the idea that, the way the spell is designed, it specifically uses the cosmic force of Evil as a power source fluff-wise. If you remove it when you research a new version of the spell, the spell gets objectively weaker in some way, as it now lacks that power source (justifying having the tag).

The more I think about it the more I want this to be my default method.

It's just more simple and I try to follow the KISS method.
Logistically, I think descriptive tag is more intended by RAW if only the core books are being used.

If a player wanted to dig more deep into this topic, I would be open to ideas.
I would put most of the work on that player though... I'm lazy.


... and now part of me wants to review the spells and determine what their alignment would be...

[noob]

That is probably where my line of thought breaks down.

There are several spells I would consider to be deserving of the Evil descriptor, but the game does not have them labeled as such.

Right off, any spell that influences the mind of a target I would consider [Evil] unless the target consents.
Basically, if a Lawful Neutral deity would say "That's messed up and probably evil..." to the common and expected purpose of a spell, that spell would get the Evil descriptor.

Edit: Yeah, this doesn't really work. I need to think on it more.

Like, should Charming a goblin be considered Evil vs just Fireballing a goblin... should they both be?
Charming messes with their mind while Fireball kills them.

Ideally a character would have reasonable justification for either action.
Maybe it is because Charm doesn't really have any alternative uses besides messing with a target's mind?
Fireball, while often used for killing a target, often is used for other purposes.

Fireball can also be used to kill non thinking stuff and destroying the environment while charm person can not.
Fireballing a goblin when you have non lethal alternatives would probably be evil but if you do not have things like nonlethal substitution or efficient non lethal weaponry or possibilities to get the goblin to surrender then it can be valid to use fireball to protect your own life.
But if you could have learned a non lethal alternative to fireball then it probably was wrong to decide to not pick it then prepare fireball in the morning while planning to use it as self defence against sentient creatures.

[mashlagoo1982]

Fireball can also be used to kill non thinking stuff and destroying the environment while charm person can not.
Fireballing a goblin when you have non lethal alternatives would probably be evil but if you do not have things like nonlethal substitution or efficient non lethal weaponry or possibilities to get the goblin to surrender then it can be valid to use fireball to protect your own life.
But if you could have learned a non lethal alternative to fireball then it probably was wrong to decide to not pick it then prepare fireball in the morning while planning to use it as self defence against sentient creatures.

I am perched precariously over a pit with no apparent bottom.
I drop a pebble, and heard no report.
I long to jump down, to find the bottom
But self-preservation prevails.
I step away.

Little do I realize, the above event was only in my mind.
I have already taken the dive.
Help...


The example regarding fireball vs non lethal damage illustrates just one of the issues making it very tempting to go with Cosmic Evil.

For my own personal headcannon I will probably go with Cosmic Evil being a thing.
Having it brought into existence through evil acts committed through the world.
Casting [Evil] spells taps into the Cosmic Evil as a source to power the spell.
So, the taint of Cosmic Evil is what bestows the [Evil] descriptor.

I probably won't rule casting the spells as an evil act, unless the table decides it should be.
It would just be something Good characters won't do because the presence of Cosmic Evil repulses them.

[hamishspence]

I haven't seen the table recently, but is unintentionally causing harm to a creature on there?

It's not.

The actual phrase was "causing gratuitious injury to a creature" (3 pts Corruption).

It's been mentioned that the book that introduces "corruption points" for various grades of evil act has casting an evil spell be the lowest possible rating, and that "causing intentional harm to a creature" is actually much higher on the scale. What other acts are, by this table, on the same level as "casting an [evil] spell?"

1 pt corrupt acts are Inflicting Intimidating Torture (torture that does no damage, or possibly just showing someone torture tools and threatening to torture them) and Humiliating An Underling.

2 pt corrupt acts: Stealing From The Needy, Betraying Friend/Ally For Personal Gain.

[icefractal]

May I put this quote in my extended sig?

Feel free!

[ShurikVch]

The point is that it's not a case of 3.0e or 3.5e introducing something new that contradicts everything said before.

Actually, there is trend to "vilify" Undead:
Mummy is "Usually lawful evil", Mummified Creature is "Always lawful evil" - how can it be?
Skeletons and Zombies are "Always neutral evil" in 3.5, but were "Always neutral" in 3.0
Lich and Demilich were "Alignment: Any" in earlier 2E
The only notable non-Evil Undead NPC from more recent modules are Es Sarch and servers of Deepstone Inn from The Sinister Spire

Basically, if a Lawful Neutral deity would say "That's messed up and probably evil..." to the common and expected purpose of a spell, that spell would get the Evil descriptor.

I understood you, but how about the Charonti from Jakandor?
Thanhotep - the LN God of Life and Death they're customary worshiping - seeing nothing wrong with them animating dead en masse - to the point when none of them go to the afterlife (since nearly all the souls are either reincarnated, or used for necromantic purposes)

[Eldonauran]

Lich and Demilich were "Alignment: Any" in earlier 2E

Really? My copy shows "Alignment: Any evil " for both of those entries.

[Segev]

I think that there is a simple explanation/solution to this problem. It is quite possible that many of these stories where the 'holy' side is corrupt, evil and cruel are simply just wrong in their portrayal of such topics. Often writers like to be edgy and reverse stereotypes. They like to tell stories that make people think, cause them to turn their expectations on their heads and perform a kind of inner self-evaluation on their beliefs (see: deconstruction). Other times, they might harbor internal biases against a certain kind of stereotype and wish to just make that stereotype into a bad guy so that they can vicariously fight back against it.

Personally, if an author portrays an organization (or character) as holy, good or righteous but does not actually have them act according to the expected understanding of those words, I have to immediately dismiss the assumptions about their righteousness or goodness and suspend my verisimilitude in order to re-categorize the powers or moral systems they are operating under as different than I expected. It does not cause me to doubt what I already know as righteous or good. If this happens with a D&D universe where Good and Evil are already heavily defined, I treat it as a deviation of what is RAW and leave it in the houserule territory where it belongs.

To be concise: I expect Good and Evil to actually mean something. If someone else wants to play fast and loose with their stories, I'll enjoy the ride with them but its all pretend anyway.

My issue is mostly that the setup with "cosmic evil doesn't actually mean evil, except that it does because of circular reasoning" (and the converse re: good and cosmic good) is a setup designed (perhaps unintentionally) to justify exactly that kind of story. And even if it's unintentional, it invites people to think it's clever to tell such stories, thereby demonstrating that good is bad and bad is good, at least sometimes.

It's not.

The actual phrase was "causing gratuitious injury to a creature" (3 pts Corruption).

1 pt corrupt acts are Inflicting Intimidating Torture (torture that does no damage, or possibly just showing someone torture tools and threatening to torture them) and Humiliating An Underling.

2 pt corrupt acts: Stealing From The Needy, Betraying Friend/Ally For Personal Gain.

Hm. So absolute cap of "as evil as stealing from the needy or betraying an ally/friend for personal gain" for the act-of-evil that's part of casting an [evil] spell. Hard to work "humiliating an underling" into spellcasting, but maybe it can serve as a gauge. "Intimidating with threat of pain" is...possible. Maybe the closest thing form which something could be worked out. My first thought is something about stranding the dead for longer, or stealing from them, but both might be hard to make have that sense of "I am doing something wrong" I'd like to be present; too easy to be abstract or "out of sight, out of mind."

[hamishspence]

"You have made the world a darker and more evil place" was the example given for undead creation specifically in BoVD.


But it attributes this to "bringing negative energy in" - which, since Negative Energy is Neutral, doesn't quite make sense.


If instead you use evil energy rather than negative energy (after all, even non-evil undead detect as evil) - then you have a specific form of harm done.

Yes, it's rather abstract - but that may be kind of the point.

[Doctor Despair]

"You have made the world a darker and more evil place" was the example given for undead specifically in BoVD.


But it attributes this to "bringing negative energy in" - which, since Negative Energy is Neutral, doesn't quite make sense.

Could it be that negative energy is neutral, but when exposed to the PMP in specific ways, creates evil (making the PMP more like the lower planes)?

[hamishspence]

Could be. We know from BOVD, that animating dozens of undead will create a "lasting evil" level of pollution - and it's the animation, not the presence, that does it - you could destroy every one the day after you'd animated them all, and it wouldn't change the fact that you'd animated them - so it wouldn't change the pollution.


The second undead-related thing that causes "evil pollution" is the long-term presence of a powerful undead on the material plane - the examples given were nightshades and liches.

[Doctor Despair]

Could be. We know from BOVD, that animating dozens of undead will create a "lasting evil" level of pollution - and it's the animation, not the presence, that does it - you could destroy every one the day after you'd animated them all, and it wouldn't change the fact that you'd animated them - so it wouldn't change the pollution.


The second undead-related thing that causes "evil pollution" is the long-term presence of a powerful undead on the material plane - the examples given were nightshades and liches.

Desecrating Aura (Su)
All nightshades give off a 20-foot radius emanation of utter desecration, imbuing their surroundings with negative energy

.

Fear Aura (Su)
Liches are shrouded in a dreadful aura of death and evil.

Lich's fear aura doesn't explicitly release negative energy into the PMP, but it does release evil, so that may have the same effect as the interaction we're considering.

[Segev]

Yes, it's rather abstract - but that may be kind of the point.

I have a hard time believing that good people would be necessarily both aware, believe, and inherently adverse to doing "abstractly evil" things. It removes it too many steps from them, and starts to come off more as finger-wagging than real evil on their part.

And, again, if it's just about "releasing more evil into the world," then all they need to do is have their use of [evil] spells do more good than the amount of abstract evil they let leak in.

It's tempting to go with "stealing from the needy" via some sort of theft from the dead soul, but that still feels too abstract and also gets weaker when you're dealing with animal zombies and skeletons. (Nobody is going to claim a good person won't put an ox to work plowing a field, nor claim only non-good people would regularly slaughter pigs for food, so it's hard to countenance 'robbing the dead animal' of something with an animation spell being something no good person would do. Not without getting abstract once more.)

"Betray a friend/ally for personal gain" might suggest that, perhaps, you made the bargain that is preparing the spell, but casting it actually betrays a trust. But then, the entities with which you're bargaining wouldn't keep making bargains with you. There's all sorts of messy things in this the more I try to think about how to make it work.

The things we know the spell does are cause a corpse to rise as an undead, powered by negative energy. It consumes black onyx to do so. The undead are under the caster's sway until he exceeds his control cap, causing some to become uncontrolled; there's solid reason to claim they'd just stand around hurting nobody if that happened, but there might be room for discussion.

I've given thought to why black onyx of 25 gp value per HD of the undead. One possibility is a bribe for psychopomps, but that begs the question of what, precisely, the psychopomps are doing to help animate the zombies. It can't be complete souls. I've posited parts of souls, but I still am uncomfortable with that on two fronts: first off, it still feels like something the caster could get away with "no knowing" about, making it less than evil on his part (even if it's still bad); and secondly, it feels clumsy.

"Humiliate an underling" is not really something that works all that well, unless you once again put the whole person back into the mindless undead and call that "humiliating." Which I think is still too powerful (it shouldn't grab the whole soul no matter how long dead).


Maybe the mechanics (in the fiction layer) of the spell involve tricking some aspect of the creature that the corpse used to be into believing there is a need or hunter to be satisfied, and then denying it because there's not even a soul or mind to fulfill it. Just the mindless, aching need. This seems on par with the non-damaging torture/threat of torture for villainy. The black onyx is a bribe for psychopomps or something similar to bring the hint of whatever that is, or the information on what to promise, and part of the spell is the caster making promises and pulling from the body's own memories the sensations and yearnings, convincing them it's just on the edge of being there, and then denying it so that the negative energy can flow into that aching void.

They're mindless, so the suffering - perhaps just a sort of nostalgia - is really all there is to its existence, and it understands orders and the world through the lens of these desires and the caster's will. They're bound to obey because they know no better. This would explain why naturally-arising zombies and skeletons might seek revenge (against the right or wrong targets), or might just fall into old habits or chores or duties, though without context or ability to complete them meaningfully except almost by accident.

The evil of animate dead is thus a minor betrayal and a minor torment for a thing that is not really much of a being anymore. The good-hearted who think there's more too it than there is might feel sorry for them, and the good-hearted who know full well the details of it still find it distasteful (like holding food out of reach of a hungry animal to goad it to move forward), but done sparingly, it's not something a good person would balk at in time of real need.

It's important that the caster be the one making the offer and performing the deceitful fraud of denying the fulfillment of it, so that the caster is unquestionably committing the act of (perhaps very minor) evil. They know they're playing a mean trick, and using that to animate and control a corpse that will, for whatever it happens to have of an experiential existence, hollow cravings. But it is just a mindless corpse, and it isn't miserable, just...empty.

Mean, even evil, but a sort of evil that even a good person might just glower at a necromancer for performing, if they don't have deeper reasons than that to be upset with the necromancer's uses for his undead minions. Most good people wouldn't stop a neutral drover from using false promises or teasings of food to goad an animal to work harder, even if it strikes them as a little bit mean. It's not really hurting anything. It's just...a little mean.

I dunno. I'm not sure I strike the right balance, here. This might still be too evil, but at least it makes the caster do something that a good person would be uncomfortable with.

Heck, it even works with volunteers: sure, the living person volunteered to be raised if he died, possibly believing in the cause to which his corpse would be put to serve. But it still involves tricking the now-mindless, more-innocent-than-a-child corpse into believing in something and then denying that belief. It actually might not work to promise the corpse the chance to serve the cause; the necessary component of the promise being thwarted to create the hollowness for the negative energy to flow in through would fail.

[Eldonauran]

My issue is mostly that the setup with "cosmic evil doesn't actually mean evil, except that it does because of circular reasoning" (and the converse re: good and cosmic good) is a setup designed (perhaps unintentionally) to justify exactly that kind of story. And even if it's unintentional, it invites people to think it's clever to tell such stories, thereby demonstrating that good is bad and bad is good, at least sometimes.

I'm not really sure what to tell you at this point. Of course it is a setup. Some things must be assumed apriori so that a foundation can be laid in order to build the entire universe out of. Or in the case of D&D, an entire cosmology. Irregardless of a person's moral persuasions, there exists magics that can override, erase or forever alter their outlook regardless of their personal agency over their own soul. Cosmic alignment forces are no less powerful, as far as I am concerned.

I understand your stance on the matter. But D&D is full of circular reasoning. Most fiction is.

[ShurikVch]

Really? My copy shows "Alignment: Any evil " for both of those entries.

The "your copy" is, likely, the Monstrous Manual (1993)
I specifically mentioned "earlier 2E": Monstrous Compendium (1989) shows "Alignment: Any"
Heck, they didn't even cared enough to change the fluff text:

Although the lich has no interest in good or evil as we understand it, the creature will do whatever it must to further its own causes. Since it feels that the living are of little importance, the lich is often viewed as evil by those who encounter it. In rare cases, liches of a most unusual nature can be found which are of any alignment.

Thus, the fluff text contradicts its own statblock in the newer book

[hamishspence]

The listed alignment in a statblock in 2e, like in 3e, represents the most common alignment.

A monster with a statblock saying "any evil" is not contradicted by fluff saying "in rare cases, of a most unusual nature, not evil".

[Segev]

I'm not really sure what to tell you at this point. Of course it is a setup. Some things must be assumed apriori so that a foundation can be laid in order to build the entire universe out of. Or in the case of D&D, an entire cosmology. Irregardless of a person's moral persuasions, there exists magics that can override, erase or forever alter their outlook regardless of their personal agency over their own soul. Cosmic alignment forces are no less powerful, as far as I am concerned.

I understand your stance on the matter. But D&D is full of circular reasoning. Most fiction is.

Except that this doesn't need to be. Some things just work best that way for the sake of a story. This doesn't. It's not hard to have cosmic evil be a consequence of evil, and to not divorce the twain. Choosing to do so is a choice that serves no useful purpose, unless your purpose IS to tell a story about "heroic evil guys" who are not actually all that evil but just happen to wear the team jersey.

[Eldonauran]

The "your copy" is, likely, the Monstrous Manual (1993)
I specifically mentioned "earlier 2E": Monstrous Compendium (1989) shows "Alignment: Any"

And 2E is notorious for poor formatting in their material, especially compared to the more standardized versions we use these days. And yes, my copy is the Monstrous Manual. You were not very specific on which version of the material you were referring to.

Heck, they didn't even cared enough to change the fluff text:

Thus, the fluff text contradicts its own statblock in the newer book

You don't have to change the fluff text if it is still relevant. Just because liches don't see good and evil the same way as the rest of us, that doesn't mean that the universe can't slap on the [Evil] to match their actions. The perception of its own actions is irrelevant to how Good and Evil appear to function. Seeing life as of little importance? Big red flag right there.

I see no contradiction of a few liches existing that are not actually morally evil. They possess sentience and are quite able to change their ways, if extremely unlikely to do so.

[mashlagoo1982]

I understood you, but how about the Charonti from Jakandor?
Thanhotep - the LN God of Life and Death they're customary worshiping - seeing nothing wrong with them animating dead en masse - to the point when none of them go to the afterlife (since nearly all the souls are either reincarnated, or used for necromantic purposes)

If I ran a game in that setting (assuming I understand the setting correctly), Animate Dead would probably not have the [Evil] descriptor. I don't know the setting well enough to fully judge if removing the tag is the proper decision.

I would consider this an instance of specific rule trumping general.

[Xgya]

That is probably where my line of thought breaks down.

There are several spells I would consider to be deserving of the Evil descriptor, but the game does not have them labeled as such.

Right off, any spell that influences the mind of a target I would consider [Evil] unless the target consents.
Basically, if a Lawful Neutral deity would say "That's messed up and probably evil..." to the common and expected purpose of a spell, that spell would get the Evil descriptor.

Edit: Yeah, this doesn't really work. I need to think on it more.

Like, should Charming a goblin be considered Evil vs just Fireballing a goblin... should they both be?
Charming messes with their mind while Fireball kills them.

Ideally a character would have reasonable justification for either action.
Maybe it is because Charm doesn't really have any alternative uses besides messing with a target's mind?
Fireball, while often used for killing a target, often is used for other purposes.

The [Evil] TAG represents a Greater Evil, not just that the spell can be used for evil.

Summoning a Devil is an [Evil] spell.
Likewise, Protection from Good is an [Evil] spell, despite the spell being entirely incapable of actually harming anyone.
Undead-creating spells are [Evil] in that same manner.

It might not be able to cause any harm, but there's something fundamentally and cosmically wrong with how the spell is used, what powers it or its lingering effects.
As such, people more sensitive to the spells' nature cannot use them. (more precisely in the case of Good Clerics, request their God to grant them one - even if their God itself is Neutral and would be perfectly capable of granting such a spell to a Neutral Cleric)

Casting an [Evil] spell is an evil act because the very nature of the spell brings with it more Evil into the world.

Every other non-[Evil] spell can be used for evil and count as doing an evil act, but the very action of casting the spell itself isn't.
Mind control magic is an iffy subject on that matter, but we can all think of a way such spells can be used for a good purpose, or even on a voluntary basis. (a Will-deficient Warforged player on one of my games specifically ASKED the Warlock to Charm him if he somehow got mind controlled so he wouldn't harm her as easily)

[Particle_Man]

I am not going to read all the way through this thread, but it is interesting that holy water damages undead and evil outsiders, while axiomatic water, anarchic water and unholy water only damage outsiders of the appropriate alignment, but not undead.

[hamishspence]

True. It's one of the few "holy" things that damages all undead, evil, neutral, and Good, though.

A holy sword won't do extra damage to a Good undead, nor will a Holy Smite spell damage a good undead.


Like with Detect Evil always detecting Undead, even Good ones - it may be a hint that undead, if tainted by evil energy, are not nearly as tainted by it as creatures with the [Evil] subtype are - they only "count as evil" for a few spells and effects, rather than all spells and effects.

[Segev]

I am not going to read all the way through this thread, but it is interesting that holy water damages undead and evil outsiders, while axiomatic water, anarchic water and unholy water only damage outsiders of the appropriate alignment, but not undead.

True. It's one of the few "holy" things that damages all undead, evil, neutral, and Good, though.

A holy sword won't do extra damage to a Good undead, nor will a Holy Smite spell damage a good undead.


Like with Detect Evil always detecting Undead, even Good ones - it may be a hint that undead, if tainted by evil energy, are not nearly as tainted by it as creatures with the [Evil] subtype are - they only "count as evil" for a few spells and effects, rather than all spells and effects.

While I fully support trying to come up with in-universe reasons for this, I will point out that the primary reason for it is likely resonance with classical tropes. Holy water is usually a weapon of choice against vampires, and often against other undead of similar caliber. I...don't think it typically comes up against modern-esq zombies, though it's used to lay fantasy ones to rest a lot.

Slightly more setting-related, the axiomatic and anarchic waters are rather late additions to the lineup, and are clearly there more for the symmetry with holy and unholy water than out of a thorough thinking-through of how these things work.

I might go so far as to have the reason anarchic and axiomatic waters do nothing special to undead be that they aren't focused on healing or harming, whereas holy water is used in healing and thus might tap the positive energy plane in some fashion not due to its inherently Good nature, but due to the purpose the powers of Good have for it. Conversely, Evil is focused on harming things, and thus unholy water would tap the negative energy plane to do harm. This just coincidentally makes them particularly good at hurting or healing undead.

It is worth noting that, despite having nothing to do with evil or good inherently, good clerics get spontaneous healing while evil clerics get spontaneous harming, but they're also of reversed effect on undead. They do explicitly tie to the positive and negative energy planes, as well, despite neither having an alignment aspect.

Perhaps anarchic water should harm constructs or machines or some other "representation of order." But then, there just isn't some universal energy source they'd draw from for their nature. I might go so far as to suggest that they're not really good additions to the setting, because their purpose seems primarily to be "the lawful/chaotic version of (un)holy water," and not to be particularly well thought-out for all that.

A case might be made for axiomatic water to draw from the positive energy plane and anarchic from the negative in their capacities as structure/life and entropy/death, but that leads to some oddities where LE winds up with a healing water and CG winds up with a harmful one, while LG has two redundantly healing ones and CE has two redundantly harmful ones.