Why is creating undead Evil?

[illyahr]

I think that can be a very interesting setting, but it does change things considerably if you consider the implications.

Undead don't need food or really any other resources. A city with a population of 2000 living people can easily have 20k undead residents underneath it (most of the problems living underground disappear when you don't need light or air and most cave-ins are only an inconvenience). And why wouldn't they? It's immortality, and while the cost to be (for example) a Necropolitan is somewhat high, it shouldn't be that hard to get a loan when you're going to become a perfect worker with eternity to pay it off. The benefits for the society are large, although the living may find themselves patronized (they're important because undead can't have children, but maybe not allowed into dangerous lines of work, and with 50 years of experience you're still an "apprentice", because the guildmasters have centuries of it and no desire to step down).

So really, most "stable" cities should have a population that's 90% or more undead, with the living considered as basically teenagers until they 'mature' to post-mortal. And the ones that don't are at a serious disadvantage.

To an extent this is just the same situation as the Tippyverse, but this one doesn't even require high-level casters to exist and be helpful. The ritual for Necropolitans is somewhat vague but doesn't seem to require anything more advanced than "zombie servitors" to do the chanting, and some forms are even easier.

Lol, maybe undeath is actually evil because it tends to create massive inequality with an immortal 1% that's also high-level than you.

What this scenario isn't considering is the 1-3 children, 6-12, grandchildren, etc that the person is not making because they no longer have the ability to reproduce. A society of undead, even if you wait for teenagers to properly mature, would stop growing in short order as none of the citizens would be having children. You would have to keep a stock of living citizens as breeding stock. Even then, the population would be so weighted toward the needs of the undead that maintaining the few living residents would become more costly than would be sustainable. It just wouldn't be cost-effective.

[Mechalich]

I think that can be a very interesting setting, but it does change things considerably if you consider the implications.

Undead don't need food or really any other resources. A city with a population of 2000 living people can easily have 20k undead residents underneath it (most of the problems living underground disappear when you don't need light or air and most cave-ins are only an inconvenience). And why wouldn't they? It's immortality, and while the cost to be (for example) a Necropolitan is somewhat high, it shouldn't be that hard to get a loan when you're going to become a perfect worker with eternity to pay it off. The benefits for the society are large, although the living may find themselves patronized (they're important because undead can't have children, but maybe not allowed into dangerous lines of work, and with 50 years of experience you're still an "apprentice", because the guildmasters have centuries of it and no desire to step down).

So really, most "stable" cities should have a population that's 90% or more undead, with the living considered as basically teenagers until they 'mature' to post-mortal. And the ones that don't are at a serious disadvantage.

To an extent this is just the same situation as the Tippyverse, but this one doesn't even require high-level casters to exist and be helpful. The ritual for Necropolitans is somewhat vague but doesn't seem to require anything more advanced than "zombie servitors" to do the chanting, and some forms are even easier.

Lol, maybe undeath is actually evil because it tends to create massive inequality with an immortal 1% that's also high-level than you.

This actually does illuminate a major out-of-universe reason for the 'evil' attachment to animate dead. If mindless undead are simply fleshy or bony robots then you've created a necropunk world. The evil tag is a handwave that allows a GM to forbid their otherwise standard high fantasy from going the necropunk route 'because that would be bad' for reasons that it is considered unnecessary to justify.

[icefractal]

What this scenario isn't considering is the 1-3 children, 6-12, grandchildren, etc that the person is not making because they no longer have the ability to reproduce. A society of undead, even if you wait for teenagers to properly mature, would stop growing in short order as none of the citizens would be having children.

In the scenario I was talking about, teenager is metaphorical - the living are considered immature no matter their age; most people become undead when they're pretty old, although some might do it before taking age penalties, so in the 30-34 range.

And given that undead don't die as often (accidents can still happen, but no old age, disease, or malnutrition related deaths cuts things down hugely), and even the living will be safer with the most dangerous jobs delegated to low-status undead (mining, for example), even a society producing half the normal amount of children would probably grow quite fast.

[NigelWalmsley]

What this scenario isn't considering is the 1-3 children, 6-12, grandchildren, etc that the person is not making because they no longer have the ability to reproduce. A society of undead, even if you wait for teenagers to properly mature, would stop growing in short order as none of the citizens would be having children. You would have to keep a stock of living citizens as breeding stock. Even then, the population would be so weighted toward the needs of the undead that maintaining the few living residents would become more costly than would be sustainable. It just wouldn't be cost-effective.

I don't think he meant literal teenagers. And the needs of the undead are really a lot lower than they are for the living. Historically, the vast majority of labor went into agriculture, which undead do not need at all. Undead also don't need to sleep, so they are dramatically more efficient than the living. Mindless undead (who I think would probably be the majority) don't even have demands at all in the economic (or any other) sense, and will simply do whatever you tell them to do until they do something else. I would expect undead societies to have an enormous surplus of basically everything. Their main resource constraint is probably managing the ratio of vampires to the living so that people don't die of blood loss and vampire don't starve.

This actually does illuminate a major out-of-universe reason for the 'evil' attachment to animate dead. If mindless undead are simply fleshy or bony robots then you've created a necropunk world. The evil tag is a handwave that allows a GM to forbid their otherwise standard high fantasy from going the necropunk route 'because that would be bad' for reasons that it is considered unnecessary to justify.

Except it doesn't fix that problem. If necromancy is Evil, that's fine. Because there are supposed to be Evil cultures that run around doing Evil. If the Elves, Dwarves, and Humans of the world forswear undead armies because they're gross, that doesn't magically stop the Goblins or Orcs from raising undead armies of their own. And since undead are basically better than comparable living troops (what with not needing food or rest, and not breaking due to morale), what that likely means is that the forces of Evil have conquered the world under their necro-empires. If you don't want a necro-punk setting, just declare that you don't have a necro-punk setting. The game doesn't need to or benefit from screwing over PC necromancers to make that happen.

[SangoProduction]

Ghostwalk changed ghosts to not be undead.

Wait. What are they then?

[noob]

Wait. What are they then?

joke/
life impeded.
it is a synonym for undead but the devs refuse to acknowledge that./joke
because it is not because you give a different type to a creature that came back from the dead under a form that is not living that it stops being undead.

[Silly Name]

So how does this work when I raise a long dead Tiger? It's not a person, it doesn't have a soul (at least I'm pretty certain animals don't have souls in DnD cosmology) and it's never going to get raised. On top of that, I'm not "defiling a corpse" because that has cultural connotations and Tigers don't have cultures.

So why is it Evil to do that?

I'm actually not sure about a complete lack of soul (some CG planes are sort-of a perfect wilderness afterlife, and in my games I've always ruled animals can be resurrected), but it's still Evil to mistreat animals and things that aren't as sapient/sentient as humans. They're still living beings and therefore are due some baseline amount of dignity - remember, Good doesn't champion respect for humanoids, it champions respect for all living beings.

And yes, most animals don't have cultural hang-ups about burial. But, again, in D&D morality is an absolute thing because Good and Evil are almost tangible, we have spells and magic items that can identify them with no error.

So if the rule is "creating undead is Evil because defilement of a corpse is always Evil, and the act of rising undead is always defilement as it interferes with the natural cycle and harms the soul in some way", then that applies to all corpses regardless of race or species.

I also want to insist that undead apparently mess up with souls even if creating a zombie doesn't trap the soul of the body's original owner. My theory is that it prevents resurrection and creates a sense of anguish and dread in the soul, causing pain to them in the afterlife until the undead is destroyed.

This also sort of addresses the point of "but what if I willingly give up my body for necromancy?" The necromancer is still causing you hurt even if you agreed to it. The fact a brave hero sacrifices themselves to let innocents escape does so willingly doesn't make the villain's murder of the hero any less evil just because the hero was willing to die at their hands.

[NigelWalmsley]

But, again, in D&D morality is an absolute thing because Good and Evil are almost tangible, we have spells and magic items that can identify them with no error.

That's not what that means. It just means there are factions in D&D that are called "Good" and "Evil". Utilitarianism or Deontology or Virtue Ethics aren't somehow false in D&Dland because there's a spell that has different opinions from them. That doesn't make any sense. D&D alignment doesn't even map particularly well to real-world morality. Apparently it's morally not okay to steal power from the god of murder as an Ur-Priest, but totally fine to mentally enslave someone or boil their blood in their veins?

Basically, D&D alignment exists to provide a fig leaf for why dungeon crawling is okay. Asking it to do anything more than that, or getting into the metaphysical weeds of objective morality, causes more problems than it solves. If necromancy lets you provide a higher standard of living for your people while having them do less work, it's good by the standards players will actually apply.

[Quertus]

Well, the answer could be - from the other side of the positive/negative energy pool, running the pump in reverse. The effect? Living creatures die younger. A single zombie only makes a small change when spread out across the whole world, but it adds up, and stronger undead like Liches consume more. It's not the creating them that does it, it's their continued existence. And it's not something you can balance with a counter-factor because the current situation (of humans living to 2d20+70) is based on things being overwhelmingly tilted to the living (as most settings are). An actual balance would have people dying of old age at 30 or the like.

So picture a necromancer and his skeleton entourage as a guy driving around in a convoy of "coal rolling" trucks and you can see why he'd be disliked.

Incidentally, this also explains why anyone would care about purging the undead from some forgotten tomb that nobody even visits - their mere existence there is like a burning oil well.

With that premise, the most ethical form of reanimation is short-duration and small in numbers. Animate a zombie hydra to save the city from an invading army (and then destroy it afterwards)? It's not without cost, but many people would say it was worth it. An entire skeleton work force? You're ****ting up the world for your own benefit.

So now I'm picturing a twisted setting where undead-hating Druids *know* that they're not "servants of the balance"; they're intentionally making the world unbalanced to give the living unnaturally long lifespans, make flowers bloom brighter, etc.

Will the party right their wrongs, at the cost of returning/condemning humanity to a much more limited lifespan, or will they contribute the cover-up of "the balance" for their own benefit and continue the racist eradication of the "alternately ambulatory"?

[Psyren]

Step 1: make skeletons.
Step 2: get an evil person to be their master.
Step 3: mind control the evil person since mind control is not evil for some mysterious reasons.
Five hundred wrongs makes a right just after a mind rape or something?

Depending on how the entry defines "master", that's arguably you again with extra steps. As with many other D&D definitions, it's not cut and dry. I'd also question whether long term control of a sapient being and allowing his undead minions to persist would leave your alignment unchanged in perpetuity.

Wait, really?

That's lame. I don't care if anybody disagrees with me on this, that's my opinion and there's no objective truth I or anybody else can point to to support or deny it. But in my opinion, that's just lame.

Bleh. Maybe it's better to just house rule animate dead as not inherently evil, then. I lose potentially-interesting fluff that I might one day come up with, but it's better than it being obnoxiously lame (again, opinion).


It negates the very notion of "good" spells, though.

Meh. It was poorly thought-out, and my efforts to make it satisfactory have failed. I give up.

Remember that D&D rules only present the status quo and the underpinnings thereof. Your character's goal in their campaign could be to discover an ethical or "pollution-free" form of necromancy, including researching a custom reanimation spell that lacks any of the tags and produces neutral undead, and they may even succeed. Or they could rewrite the cosmology such that undead are stable magical creations like constructs instead of having a constant link to the NEP, solving spontaneous undead forever. You could even solve the issue of good spells not changing alignment. Just because a status quo exists doesnt mean it cant be changed or destroyed over the course of a campaign after all, and I think a post-industrial undead-fueled economy is a valid endpoint for any number of adventuring stories.

[Segev]

Remember that D&D rules only present the status quo and the underpinnings thereof. Your character's goal in their campaign could be to discover an ethical or "pollution-free" form of necromancy, including researching a custom reanimation spell that lacks any of the tags and produces neutral undead, and they may even succeed. Or they could rewrite the cosmology such that undead are stable magical creations like constructs instead of having a constant link to the NEP, solving spontaneous undead forever. You could even solve the issue of good spells not changing alignment. Just because a status quo exists doesnt mean it cant be changed or destroyed over the course of a campaign after all, and I think a post-industrial undead-fueled economy is a valid endpoint for any number of adventuring stories.

To the contrary, I like my evil necromancer concept. I want his evil to actually be evil, though, even when done through supreme callousness. I'm not bothered by animate dead being evil. I'm bothered by it being evil with a lame, "Mweeheeheehee I'm so edgy" sort of 'safe' evil.

I'm annoyed by it being evil-by-jersey-only.

[Jay R]

Getting back to the original question, creating undead is considered evil because it fits the general definition of desecrating corpses of most societies throughout history.

Because zombies, animated skeletons, ghouls, wraiths, vampires, etc. have been considered evil in most legends and stories about them for centuries -- possibly millennia.

This one was not a D&D invention. Having the dead walk while still dead (not resurrected, for instance) is pretty much considered evil.

There are very few stories about Count Dracula the Philanthropist, about the Zombie economic boom, or about the Egyptian mummy that comes out of the tomb to feed the poor.

And those few that exist are generally considered to be subverting expectations.

[Phhase]

I think that can be a very interesting setting, but it does change things considerably if you consider the implications.

Undead don't need food or really any other resources. A city with a population of 2000 living people can easily have 20k undead residents underneath it (most of the problems living underground disappear when you don't need light or air and most cave-ins are only an inconvenience). And why wouldn't they? It's immortality, and while the cost to be (for example) a Necropolitan is somewhat high, it shouldn't be that hard to get a loan when you're going to become a perfect worker with eternity to pay it off. The benefits for the society are large, although the living may find themselves patronized (they're important because undead can't have children, but maybe not allowed into dangerous lines of work, and with 50 years of experience you're still an "apprentice", because the guildmasters have centuries of it and no desire to step down).

So really, most "stable" cities should have a population that's 90% or more undead, with the living considered as basically teenagers until they 'mature' to post-mortal. And the ones that don't are at a serious disadvantage.

To an extent this is just the same situation as the Tippyverse, but this one doesn't even require high-level casters to exist and be helpful. The ritual for Necropolitans is somewhat vague but doesn't seem to require anything more advanced than "zombie servitors" to do the chanting, and some forms are even easier.

Lol, maybe undeath is actually evil because it tends to create massive inequality with an immortal 1% that's also high-level than you.

Right, yeah, BUT what I'm getting at is that you don't need explicit mechanical validation in order for there to be an in-universe stigma for undeath as gross and evil. In a medievel-ish magical setting, it does make sense for most places. Dead stuff come back is understandably unsettling at first contact. I think that sort of "logical conclusion scenario" is something that would be more fun as a possible option for the players to create down the line if it occurs to them, rather than an obvious starting point.

[Psyren]

To the contrary, I like my evil necromancer concept. I want his evil to actually be evil, though, even when done through supreme callousness. I'm not bothered by animate dead being evil. I'm bothered by it being evil with a lame, "Mweeheeheehee I'm so edgy" sort of 'safe' evil.

I'm annoyed by it being evil-by-jersey-only.

I guess I'm confused then - because not only does the above have nothing at all to do with the info I provided ([good] spells not making you good), WotC did provide a concrete if broad reason why animating undead makes you evil, or at least callous so I don't see how that can be interpreted as "jersey-only."

Right, yeah, BUT what I'm getting at is that you don't need explicit mechanical validation in order for there to be an in-universe stigma for undeath as gross and evil. In a medievel-ish magical setting, it does make sense for most places. Dead stuff come back is understandably unsettling at first contact. I think that sort of "logical conclusion scenario" is something that would be more fun as a possible option for the players to create down the line if it occurs to them, rather than an obvious starting point.

I think it's worth asking the question though, because there's lots of magic that is unsettling without automatically being evil. There are spells that usurp your free will like Dominate or Enslave, spells that outright destroy your sapience like Baleful Polymorph and Feeblemind, and spells that can force you to turn on your friends and family like Friend to Foe or Insanity. So I think that going the extra mile to explain why making undead gets the [evil] tag while these sorts of spells don't is a worthwhile endeavor for a book like LM.

[NigelWalmsley]

Getting back to the original question, creating undead is considered evil because it fits the general definition of desecrating corpses of most societies throughout history.

But you don't have to desecrate corpses to do necromancy. You could just cast Animate Dead on a bunch of horse or cow skeletons, getting you a plow team that never tires. People used animal bone tools for stuff, so it's hard to see how animal skeletons wouldn't be okay if necromancy actually did work. Moreover, this standard starts getting really uncomfortable really quickly (most societies throughout history had something that we would describe as slaves).

Having the dead walk while still dead (not resurrected, for instance) is pretty much considered evil.

The waking dead are evil because they do evil stuff. Dracula is evil because he drinks people's blood and does other evil stuff, not because he's supposed to be dead and isn't.

[JusticeZero]

Some settings it isn't. But it depends on how it works in setting.

My game, some entities who trade in souls recently gave a character some knives, requesting he use them to do coup-de-grace on sentient enemies with.
Used in that way, the knives start to glow after a kill, and are to be returned then. The fluff specifies that victims cannot be raised, reincarnated... or Animated, or transformed into undead... unless the knife is destroyed. In other words, animating a skeleton requires the owner of the body's soul to be imprisoned inside.
This is not dissimilar to RAW, where you cannot bring someone back to life if part of their body, even part you aren't using for the spell, is being used to animate an undead creature, even so minor as a mindless skeleton.
That fluff makes undead usually a lot worse.

[Bohandas]

I feel that necromancy being evil is best explained in light of Good and Evil being objective concrete forces in the D&D multiverse. In this context, the creation of undead being evil can be understood as an arbitrary physical reaction. Like why do radioacfive elements decay? There's a material cause but there's not a reason.

[ShurikVch]

Some notions:

Animate Dead is [Evil], but creation of Blood Golem is non-aligned?
Really?
30 gallons of blood? (Not from a Dragon or Outsider) Must be a heck of donation...

Not just animating, but even summoning Zombies is [Evil] - despite you're neither creating something new, nor even summoning it for particularly long time (1 round/level)
Meanwhile, summoning a Flesh Golem is (again!) non-aligned - despite it being made of, essentially, the same materials as a Zombie, animated with the very same spell as a Zombie, equipped with imprisoned tortured Elemental, and (unlike a Zombie!) may go on rampage at the drop of hat...

Now, there was said a lot about the alleged Evil/Negative "pollution"...
Wait a minute...
Where, exactly, we animating our hypothetical Zombie?
Because I don't see clause about Animate Dead stopping being [Evil], if cast on the Negative Energy Plane, or in the Abyss...

The Sticks and Stones spell isn't [Evil], despite it can create Wights (and not even "Wights at the next sunset", but "Wights in 1d4 rounds")

Consecrate Spell and Purify Spell [metamagic] add [Good] descriptor to a spell.
Thus, Consecrated Purified Animate Dead causing more Good than Evil...

Dirgesinger PrC (Libris Mortis): Song of Awakening - which creates actual Undead (even if just for a short time) isn't labeled as [Evil] - unlike the Song of Bolstering "... bolster undead creatures against turning, much as an evil cleric does"

White Arcanist PrC in Ravenloft (Heroes of Light) is not just non-Evil, but must be Virtuous (it's one of requirements). Meanwhile, this PrC not just a Necromancy specialist, but at capstone becomes Undead - Ghost...

It's especially perplexing because necromancy in 3.5 was explicitly "magic that manipulates life and death", and thus, healing spells were classified as necromancy, completely logical. But in keeping with the "ew gross necromancy" theme, 5e moved healing to evocation for some reason. Except, they also made Positive Energy capable of inflicting radiant damage to anything, which makes no sense! They way it worked in 3.5 where it was healing only unless diametrically opposed by negative energy was far more in keeping with the "gross necromany" narrative! Whatever, I'm just ranting about nothing, disregard.

Correction: healing in 3.5 is mostly Conjuration (healing);
Necromancy, usually, heals something only if it's draining health from somebody else (although Death Pact restores you from the death - and not as Undead)
Healing was Necromancy in 2E AD&D

That's like asking if global warming is real, why are there still blizzards?

Attempt to disproving absence of something by proving presence of something completely different is a red herring.

Karrnathi undead exist precisely because Karrnath already contained Mabaran manifest zones (or "undead wastelands") that allowed for experimentation with more advanced forms of necromancy. As for the undead troops themselves, for most of the Last War, they fought primarily on the borders or in other nations, so it's not like they were all concentrated in Karrnath. It was only relatively recently that all undead troops were recalled back to Karrnath's borders.

So, let's see - known Mabar manifest zones are:
Aundaire - Floating Towers of Arcanix (maybe-manmade manifest zones, tied to any plane except Dal Quor)
Breland - Faded Forest
Corvagura region of Riedra - Shanjueed Jungle
Eldeen Reaches - The Gloaming
Sarlona - Wild Zones (especially strong manifest zones for unspecified planes - with actual planar traits, and Outsiders there aren't considered extraplanar, and can't be banished)
Tashana Tundra - Aukaraks (Reality Storms: fleeting, unstable manifest zones, and can be tied to any plane except Dal Quor)
Thrane - Valin Field
Xen'drik - manifest zones to most other planes

But what's about Karrnath?
Where's its Mabar manifest zone?
Sorry, but Fort Bones is 4E - thus, doesn't exist for this subforum...

[Herbert_W]

It seems to me that most of these contradictions are arising from your assumption that good and evil energies cancel each other out like [some sort of physics or chemistry metaphor about things that cancel each other out]. As far as I'm aware, this assumption is not canon.

It's not a "chemistry" thing. It's simply that good and evil are opposites. What, precisely, does "good radiation" and "evil radiation" do?

The best I've been able to come up with is "promote their alignment in the area." If good and evil are equally promoted, this would cancel out in general.

I'm digging up a discussion from earlier in this thread because there's a possibility that you've both overlooked: that negative and positive energy simultaneously cancel out on a statistical level while not canceling out on an individual level.

I'll use a real-world example to illustrate this point. Suppose I own a chemical factory and carelessly dump carcinogenic pollution into the local river. Alice gets cancer and dies. Later, Bob develops cancer for unrelated reasons and I donate money to allow him undergo a new and expensive form of treatment, ultimately saving his life. Statistically, I've done as much good as harm. They cancel out. The total amount of death due to cancer remains the same as if I had done neither. Individually . . . well, Alice is still dead. Saving Bob cannot change that.

Bringing this back to DnD, we could have a situation where casting both evil and good spells in equal measure will create a world where the total amount of darkness/light, compassion/hate, suffering/flourishing etc. remains the same but each is now happening to different people. While the total amount of general badness in the world remains the same, some of that is now the spellcaster's fault. Moral responsibility for causing harm has a greater impact on someone's alignment than moral responsibility for preventing harm, so that caster's alignment would take a turn downwards as a result.

Under this interpretation, there is one way that equal and opposite good and evil acts might cancel - and that is if both are done to the same person, having effects of the same nature on that person, such that the net effect is null. In cases where a character has released energy into the world that could indirectly cause any sort of harm to anyone, it's impossible for them to know who they'd need to compensate and how - so certain spells can be Evil because of "evil pollution" and, although "good pollution" will statistically counter the effect that these spells have on the world, it will not counter the effect that these spells have on the caster's alignment.

[Jay R]

But you don't have to desecrate corpses to do necromancy. You could just cast Animate Dead on a bunch of horse or cow skeletons, getting you a plow team that never tires. People used animal bone tools for stuff, so it's hard to see how animal skeletons wouldn't be okay if necromancy actually did work. Moreover, this standard starts getting really uncomfortable really quickly (most societies throughout history had something that we would describe as slaves).

Animal skeletons are OK. Animal skeletons that walk around after they have died are not OK, in virtually every culture in history.

I cannot reply directly to your comment about slaves, due to forum rules.. But it is irrelevant to a discussion of how corpses should be treated.

The waking dead are evil because they do evil stuff. Dracula is evil because he drinks people's blood and does other evil stuff, not because he's supposed to be dead and isn't.

No. Just no. Virtually all stories about the walking dead assume they are evil. This isn't because every author for thousands of years just happened to make the same choice independently. They do evil stuff because they are evil because they are unnatural beings who are supposed to be dead and they aren't. Really.

I can't cite sources because of the rules for this forum, but it's really true. They have been presumed to be unnatural, and that implies that they are evil.

[NigelWalmsley]

Animal skeletons are OK. Animal skeletons that walk around after they have died are not OK, in virtually every culture in history.

None of those cultures had access to necromancy. Lots of modern medicine is stuff that, for very good reason, was considered deeply creepy in the past. But that's not a good reason to reject organ transplants or blood transfusions now, because we can do those things safely and they save (or prolong) lives. Skeleton Oxen are totally safe as long as they are controlled. There is absolutely no reason to believe that a culture in a world where that was true would behave in the same way as one from our world.

They have been presumed to be unnatural, and that implies that they are evil.

Again, I want you to think about the other things that have been "presumed to be unnatural", and then reflect on why this is not a standard for morality that is conductive to characters and cultures we can talk about without throwing up in our mouths. The same cultures that thought dead things walking around were evil saw no problem with expanding by brutally murdering their neighbors. If you want to accept their moral guidance on the former, that's on you, but I personally don't want to do that for obvious reasons.

[Bohandas]

Furthermore, in both D&D and folklore, lots of types of the undead can arise spontaneously without the intervention of fiends or necromancers, and are therefore, by definition, NOT unnatural.

Mohrgs, for example arise naturally from the bodies of unrepentent murderers, and ghouls arise naturally from the bodies of cannibals. No fiends or necromancers needed.

EDIT:
I suppose they could be unnatural if they did these things specifically with the intention of cheating death, but that doesn't seem to be a thing that we see.

EDIT:

This is not dissimilar to RAW, where you cannot bring someone back to life if part of their body, even part you aren't using for the spell, is being used to animate an undead creature, even so minor as a mindless skeleton.

You CAN bring them back to life with Reincarnate or True Resurrection and THEN animate their body however.

Although, I suppose blocking resurrection could be evil by itself, even without trapping souls. Although the level of evil would depend on the availability of resurrection and the shabbiness of the afterlife; at least one of these factors would have to be significant for blocking resurrection to really matter in the grand scheme of things

[NigelWalmsley]

I'm pretty sure stopping someone from being returned to life isn't Evil, because there's a spell that's literally called Trap the Soul, and it doesn't get the Evil tag. Again, "Evil" does not represent a coherent moral system. It represents "these guys are the villains in dungeons".

[Bohandas]

There are very few stories about Count Dracula the Philanthropist

...

or about ... comes out of the tomb to feed the poor.[/url]

And those few that exist are generally considered to be subverting expectations.

There's some very noteworthy exceptions to these, but I can't go into them because they involve Romanian history and a popular mainstream religion, respectively.

EDIT:
There's also a specifically egyptian one for the second one tok but I can't go into that either as it involves mythology

[NigelWalmsley]

I think he's just flat wrong. Generally speaking, if you are dead then come back, that's totally okay if you come back looking normal and act like a normal person afterwards. What makes it evil is when you come back looking like a creepy monster and do evil stuff afterwards. Which, again, "people who look creepy are inherently bad" is not a great moral precedent.

[Bohandas]

Again, I want you to think about the other things that have been "presumed to be unnatural", and then reflect on why this is not a standard for morality that is conductive to characters and cultures we can talk about without throwing up in our mouths. The same cultures that thought dead things walking around were evil saw no problem with expanding by brutally murdering their neighbors. If you want to accept their moral guidance on the former, that's on you, but I personally don't want to do that for obvious reasons.

Interestingly, the undead could be viewed as a metapbor for the persistence of such cultures' values. An awful thing from the past that should have departed long ago, but yet persists and continues to torment those who still live. It can convert the living into more of itself. And it is usually either mindless or decadently corrupt

[Blackhawk748]

I'm actually not sure about a complete lack of soul (some CG planes are sort-of a perfect wilderness afterlife, and in my games I've always ruled animals can be resurrected), but it's still Evil to mistreat animals and things that aren't as sapient/sentient as humans. They're still living beings and therefore are due some baseline amount of dignity - remember, Good doesn't champion respect for humanoids, it champions respect for all living beings.

And yes, most animals don't have cultural hang-ups about burial. But, again, in D&D morality is an absolute thing because Good and Evil are almost tangible, we have spells and magic items that can identify them with no error.

But I'm not, cuz it's dead and I'm utilizing every part of it's body. Does me eating a bull disrespect the bull?

And Good and Evil are factions with that label in DnD. It's absolute because Heironious/Torm say it is, and I will say they are generally good, but they can also be right jerks and aren't perfect. See the fact that Deathatch is somehow Evil

So if the rule is "creating undead is Evil because defilement of a corpse is always Evil, and the act of rising undead is always defilement as it interferes with the natural cycle and harms the soul in some way", then that applies to all corpses regardless of race or species.

I also want to insist that undead apparently mess up with souls even if creating a zombie doesn't trap the soul of the body's original owner. My theory is that it prevents resurrection and creates a sense of anguish and dread in the soul, causing pain to them in the afterlife until the undead is destroyed.

This also sort of addresses the point of "but what if I willingly give up my body for necromancy?" The necromancer is still causing you hurt even if you agreed to it. The fact a brave hero sacrifices themselves to let innocents escape does so willingly doesn't make the villain's murder of the hero any less evil just because the hero was willing to die at their hands.

It doesn't cause harm to the soul, the reason you can't Raise Dead someone who's body is currently animated is incredibly simple: It's cuz the corpse is occupied. The negative energy is simply occupying the spot a soul would inside of the corpse and therefore the soul can't go back unless the undead is destroyed or you use a more power Rez that doesn't need a body.

This is far more in line than having a 3rd level spell mess with a soul.

Remember that D&D rules only present the status quo and the underpinnings thereof. Your character's goal in their campaign could be to discover an ethical or "pollution-free" form of necromancy, including researching a custom reanimation spell that lacks any of the tags and produces neutral undead, and they may even succeed. Or they could rewrite the cosmology such that undead are stable magical creations like constructs instead of having a constant link to the NEP, solving spontaneous undead forever. You could even solve the issue of good spells not changing alignment. Just because a status quo exists doesnt mean it cant be changed or destroyed over the course of a campaign after all, and I think a post-industrial undead-fueled economy is a valid endpoint for any number of adventuring stories.

This reminds me of something. How the hell is making a Golem not evil? You are literally trapping an Elemental inside of an artificial body, a being that is intelligent mind you, and making it do whatever you want.

"But Undead make Negative energy pollution!" And Golem's enslave intelligent Elementals, which is worse!!

[Phhase]

Some notions:

Animate Dead is [Evil], but creation of Blood Golem is non-aligned?
Really?
30 gallons of blood? (Not from a Dragon or Outsider) Must be a heck of donation...

Not just animating, but even summoning Zombies is [Evil] - despite you're neither creating something new, nor even summoning it for particularly long time (1 round/level)
Meanwhile, summoning a Flesh Golem is (again!) non-aligned - despite it being made of, essentially, the same materials as a Zombie, animated with the very same spell as a Zombie, equipped with imprisoned tortured Elemental, and (unlike a Zombie!) may go on rampage at the drop of hat...

Now, there was said a lot about the alleged Evil/Negative "pollution"...
Wait a minute...
Where, exactly, we animating our hypothetical Zombie?
Because I don't see clause about Animate Dead stopping being [Evil], if cast on the Negative Energy Plane, or in the Abyss...

The Sticks and Stones spell isn't [Evil], despite it can create Wights (and not even "Wights at the next sunset", but "Wights in 1d4 rounds")

Consecrate Spell and Purify Spell [metamagic] add [Good] descriptor to a spell.
Thus, Consecrated Purified Animate Dead causing more Good than Evil...

Dirgesinger PrC (Libris Mortis): Song of Awakening - which creates actual Undead (even if just for a short time) isn't labeled as [Evil] - unlike the Song of Bolstering "... bolster undead creatures against turning, much as an evil cleric does"

White Arcanist PrC in Ravenloft (Heroes of Light) is not just non-Evil, but must be Virtuous (it's one of requirements). Meanwhile, this PrC not just a Necromancy specialist, but at capstone becomes Undead - Ghost...



Correction: healing in 3.5 is mostly Conjuration (healing);
Necromancy, usually, heals something only if it's draining health from somebody else (although Death Pact restores you from the death - and not as Undead)
Healing was Necromancy in 2E AD&D



Attempt to disproving absence of something by proving presence of something completely different is a red herring.


So, let's see - known Mabar manifest zones are:
Aundaire - Floating Towers of Arcanix (maybe-manmade manifest zones, tied to any plane except Dal Quor)
Breland - Faded Forest
Corvagura region of Riedra - Shanjueed Jungle
Eldeen Reaches - The Gloaming
Sarlona - Wild Zones (especially strong manifest zones for unspecified planes - with actual planar traits, and Outsiders there aren't considered extraplanar, and can't be banished)
Tashana Tundra - Aukaraks (Reality Storms: fleeting, unstable manifest zones, and can be tied to any plane except Dal Quor)
Thrane - Valin Field
Xen'drik - manifest zones to most other planes

But what's about Karrnath?
Where's its Mabar manifest zone?
Sorry, but Fort Bones is 4E - thus, doesn't exist for this subforum...

Hm. I stand corrected I suppose. Still feels weird.

Outside that, these are all excellent points that deserve more attention. Especially Consecrate and Purify, that's hilarious.

[Bohandas]

"But Undead make Negative energy pollution!" And Golem's enslave intelligent Elementals, which is worse!!

Where does it say they're intelligent? The elementites from Planar Handbook have animal intelligence and the Element Creatures from Manual of the Planes can be non-intelligent entirely.

[Blackhawk748]

Where does it say they're intelligent? The elementites from Planar Handbook have animal intelligence and the Element Creatures from Manual of the Planes can be non-intelligent entirely.

You aren't using Elementites or Element Creatures, you are using an Elemental. It's called out specifically and in the meta sense, those others didn't exist when the rules for making Golems were being made.