Why is creating undead Evil?

[Troacctid]

Are you claiming that every last one of the reasons given is RAW as *fact*, not as an *optional* explanation for why creating undead is evil? If so, that's not what I initially heard claimed, and that changes my response.

Still doesn't exactly leave us with a clear algorithm with which to evaluate D&D morality.

Actually, I reject those rules being universal. After all, one of them is, "draws Atropos". Unless Atropos is a canonically mandated part of every 3e setting, that *cannot* be a part of the universal heuristic of D&D morality.

In light of this, your stance is…?

I'm just saying, they clearly explained it. If, like Segev, you dislike the explanations, that's your prerogative, but don't pretend it was never explained at all.

So - very many arguments, but very very few facts...

About the [Evil] descriptor:
Deathwatch is [Evil];
Energy Drain is not;
guess which of them is able to create Undead?..

💁

Well, the skeleton itself is still causing pollution by existing (cf. evil alignment despite being mindless), even though the ritual to create it is cleaner, so it's not a perfect solution, but it's a step in the right direction.

[Psyren]

I do not agree with the flesh golem. It can go berserk in which it destroys what is nearest, including any sentient beings. If you except that that is not evil and is okay then how is a zombie or skeletons potential actions any different?

If you made a Flesh Golem in the middle of a town square and left it alone there then yeah, that probably would be evil. The reason it's not universally evil is because the golem itself going crazy is only a danger to people nearby. Given its speed, abilities and intelligence (or more accurately, it's lack of all those things) you can reasonably figure out what surroundings would be dangerous to leave one in.

There is no way to make undead safer like that. Spontaneous ones can show up literally anywhere on the Material, anytime someone dies. There is no maximum radius listed, no guarantee of a convenient time, and above all, no way of knowing which undead you'll get due to your activities. The only safe and reasonable thing to do is to discourage the act entirely (at least among empathetic sapients), which the cosmos has done.

It’s only always on if you leave it intact and functional. If you build the always-on car for the purpose of one specific trip - perhaps to deliver life-saving medicine to a city where thousands of lives are in danger if they don’t get the medicine in a time frame that requires the car to get it there - and then disable/destroy it, it’s no different in terms of pollution than driving a regular car for it.

I’m sure you can see the analogy, but just to be complete: if you animate some undead for a particular good task and then destroy them, it’s analogous. And yet it’s evil to do so, no matter how good your purpose, nor how brief the polluting undead exist.

Of course it's still evil. This isn't Neverwinter Nights, you can't undo a murder by helping a thousand little old ladies cross the street. In D&D, evil acts stay evil even if you then do something good, and even if the two are related.

Second, both the creation of the undead and the casting of the spell to do so are evil acts (BoVD.) Smashing up your undead after they deliver insulin or whatever, even if it somehow cancelled out the former, does nothing to the latter. And smashing the undead doesn't magically clear up whatever pollution/seepage/residue/etc they put out while they were extant.

Third and final, what contrived excuse could possibly you have for making them that makes them the only option in that situation? There are other, and likely far more efficient/effective ways of "delivering life-saving medicine" for example, than sending it in the care of a rotting putrid corpse. Almost every situation where the pro-necromancy people say "don't you understand, I HAD to make horrid mockeries of the living to solve this problem" is similarly contrived.

Which is another reason the pollution thing is silly: it depends on how long the undead last! As opposed to being an evil act because the act itself is evil.

Got a source for it depending on how long the undead last?

Making them is an evil act, and so is casting [evil] spells to do it, as mentioned above.That's two evil acts every time an undead is animated. For all we know, the pollution put out in that moment could be analagous to the way energy from souls works in OotS - e.g. big burst at the moment of conversion, slower drip over time after that, as opposed to a constant flow from beginning to end.

[ShurikVch]

💁

Well, the skeleton itself is still causing pollution by existing (cf. evil alignment despite being mindless), even though the ritual to create it is cleaner, so it's not a perfect solution, but it's a step in the right direction.

My point was: alignment in 3.5 is arbitrary and nonsensical: using a poison (non-lethal!) is more [Evil] than just stab 'em in the face, and actively draining their life force away is more [Evil] than ability to tell that someone is dying via Negative Energy...

Also:

My main gripe with the "Cosmological balance tilts" or "Pollution" or whatever arguments isn't that, and it's not that they're never actually represented mechanically and therefore it's hard to argue that they're actually relevant anyway. No, my main problem with them is that they're platitudinous coverups for a system that glorifies disproportionate posthumous retribution and stipulates a variety of moral tenets that now make even WotC themselves, who wrote the damn things, recoil in disgust.

[NigelWalmsley]

Unavenger's point is basically true. Even if you accept that D&D's conception of morality is coherent, the coherent standard it produces is monstrous by the moral standards of most people.

That said, I will quibble a little bit about specifically the "disproportionate posthumous retribution" thing. Certainly some sources are like that, but that's because the writers don't seem to understand how the cosmology they wrote up actually works and try to substitute their own cultural beliefs about the afterlife. In D&D, Hell isn't the place you go as a punishment for your sins. It's the place you go for rewards if you happen to have been on Team Sin in life. So in theory, the torture isn't a punishment for people who violated the tenets of the God of Love, but a reward for people who worship the God of Torture.

[Troacctid]

My point was: alignment in 3.5 is arbitrary and nonsensical: using a poison (non-lethal!) is more [Evil] than just stab 'em in the face, and actively draining their life force away is more [Evil] than ability to tell that someone is dying via Negative Energy...

So? I agree that sleep poison being evil is nonsensical. But we're not talking about poison. We're talking about undead (and, to a lesser extent, spells with the evil descriptor), which, unlike poison, is a totally sensible thing to mark as evil.

[ShurikVch]

So? I agree that sleep poison being evil is nonsensical. But we're not talking about poison. We're talking about undead (and, to a lesser extent, spells with the evil descriptor), which, unlike poison, is a totally sensible thing to mark as evil.

Gods (non-Evil gods!) created Undead (non-Evil Undead!)

Are you stipulating non-Evil gods do [Evil] things - just because Undead is Undead?

[Segev]

Of course it's still evil. This isn't Neverwinter Nights, you can't undo a murder by helping a thousand little old ladies cross the street. In D&D, evil acts stay evil even if you then do something good, and even if the two are related.

Second, both the creation of the undead and the casting of the spell to do so are evil acts (BoVD.) Smashing up your undead after they deliver insulin or whatever, even if it somehow cancelled out the former, does nothing to the latter. And smashing the undead doesn't magically clear up whatever pollution/seepage/residue/etc they put out while they were extant.

Third and final, what contrived excuse could possibly you have for making them that makes them the only option in that situation? There are other, and likely far more efficient/effective ways of "delivering life-saving medicine" for example, than sending it in the care of a rotting putrid corpse. Almost every situation where the pro-necromancy people say "don't you understand, I HAD to make horrid mockeries of the living to solve this problem" is similarly contrived.

You seem to me to be trying to have it both ways: it's the "undead pollution" that makes it evil, but bringing it into existence is the evil act, not having it hang around and do stuff while it generates that evil pollution by its very existence.

Got a source for it depending on how long the undead last?

Making them is an evil act, and so is casting [evil] spells to do it, as mentioned above.That's two evil acts every time an undead is animated. For all we know, the pollution put out in that moment could be analagous to the way energy from souls works in OotS - e.g. big burst at the moment of conversion, slower drip over time after that, as opposed to a constant flow from beginning to end.

Okay, so your assertion is that "evil pollution" is done at the time of creation.

Well, then, no, it's a single solitary burst of it for each act of casting it, and that should be measurable and you should be able to determine if the harm that evil pollution is causing is worth the good you can do from having the undead around.

Just as we can judge that having cars to drive around creates more good in the world than the pollution they cause.

I was, perhaps, misled by the car analogy to assuming that, like a car, it's the running of the undead that causes the pollution in your model.

I still think "evil pollution" is a stupid model.

Don't get me wrong: I don't mind the notion of "evil auras" or even having them linger and manipulate the environment or subtly encourage evil things to happen. What I mind is the idea that there are acts which, without in any way absent this result being evil, result in evil aura happening.

"It's evil because it generates an evil aura" is, to me, like saying, "The vase hit the floor because it shattered," or, "He's a genius because Harvard gave him a scholarship." It's one thing for the effect to be evidence of the cause; it's another for the effect to cause the cause.

I don't mind it generating evil pollution if evil actions do that. I do mind that being the sole reason it's an evil action.

[NigelWalmsley]

So? I agree that sleep poison being evil is nonsensical. But we're not talking about poison. We're talking about undead (and, to a lesser extent, spells with the evil descriptor), which, unlike poison, is a totally sensible thing to mark as evil.

Once you've conceded that the alignment rules are nonsensical anywhere, you've lost. If we can't take the Evil tag as gospel because we don't want to bite the bullet on all surgeons everywhere being Evil for using anesthetic, we can't justify appealing to "the rules say it's Evil" for undead. So we have to look at the arguments, and those are pretty weaksauce.

The "it's bad to have dead things walking around" thing doesn't hold water because that's A) not universal and B) not consistent with the existence of the positive energy undead Eberron has, which are exactly like undead from this perspective.

The pollution argument is just terrible. It's not ever defined in the rules, so it can't be substantively engaged with. It's not consistent with how we treat pollution in the real world. It's not even consistent with the rest of the rules, because it is explicitly not an Evil act to summon creatures that are made of negative energy, or to create portals to the Negative Energy Plane, or to pump someone full of negative energy.

[Unavenger]

Also, forgive me if I'm wrong, but fell animate inflict assorted wounds uses negative energy to raise undead, the same undead, and is... uh, non-aligned. Clearly, it's not the actual undead that are evil, so you basically have to argue the pollution angle - you know, the weird, inconsistent, ill-defined one - and that it is in fact the method of undead creation, not the undead creation itself, that's evil. It's a dumb situation no matter what.

[Quertus]

Iirc Atropus created the gods, so if the setting has the standard gods, it has Atropus; of course, if we are using that as the justification, then a homebrew setting without Atropus should remove the Evil tag from negative energy/undead-related spells.

Well, that's something. Not sure about Eberon, or undead on the planes, or undead after Atropus is killed, or… you get the idea.

-----

I can accept "*some* uses of negative energy create pollution; *others* don't." I'm fine so far.

"Undead make pollution"? OK.

Creatures not just powered by but powered by *and made from* don't make pollution? This implies that it's not *being powered by*, but either an error in the *way* that they're being powered, or a particular interaction between "powered by negative energy" and "composed of (elemental) matter" that creates pollution.

If it were just an error in the construction technique? Well, I could see the first Wizard making a mistake, and everyone else just copying him. But Clerics? That would imply levels of incompetence even *I* don't usually ascribe to the gods. And spontaneous undead? No, something's fishy here.

And being powered by negative energy interacting with matter producing pollution? That only works if undead are made of matter. What of Ghosts, or Shadows? Are they made of matter?

So I'm still left with "darts at a dartboard", and "I've invented an animation spell which doesn't have those problems, done" as the extent of the underlying logic.

[Psyren]

Okay, so your assertion is that "evil pollution" is done at the time of creation.

I'm saying it could be. In case my sig didn't make this abundantly clear, I like to work backwards from the facts/rules/world to justify ways they could make sense. And in this case, thanks to LM, it's not even particularly hard to do.

Well, then, no, it's a single solitary burst of it for each act of casting it, and that should be measurable and you should be able to determine if the harm that evil pollution is causing is worth the good you can do from having the undead around.

And that, Segev, is the part I still don't think you're getting.

"Act X, which always has evil results, can also potentially have good results under certain circumstances" is not a reason for Act X to not have an [Evil] tag. At best, it's maybe a reason for you, the person who has done or tries to do Act X routinely, to perhaps not go to an evil afterlife if your actions were truly justified and there was no viable alternative. But the tag on Act X remains and is supported by the metaphysical rules established by the cosmology.

Just as we can judge that having cars to drive around creates more good in the world than the pollution they cause.

I'm beginning to feel like a broken record pointing out the myriad ways the car analogy is flawed yet again, but here they are quickly - the harm of cars is possible to contain and mitigate, the downside is both gradual and quantifiable, rulebreakers can be traced and punished, no viable alternatives exist to cars in current society, etc.

Also, forgive me if I'm wrong, but fell animate inflict assorted wounds uses negative energy to raise undead, the same undead, and is... uh, non-aligned. Clearly, it's not the actual undead that are evil, so you basically have to argue the pollution angle - you know, the weird, inconsistent, ill-defined one - and that it is in fact the method of undead creation, not the undead creation itself, that's evil. It's a dumb situation no matter what.

What makes you think it isn't evil? Fell Animate is a feat, they usually don't get alignment descriptors. You are however creating undead, which is an evil act per BoVD pg. 8.

[Bohandas]

My point was: alignment in 3.5 is arbitrary and nonsensical: using a poison (non-lethal!) is more [Evil] than just stab 'em in the face

Actually it's not according to the PHB

"Animals, traps, poisons, and other potential perils are not evil, and as such this spell does not detect them" -3.5e PHB pg.218

[Unavenger]

Actually it's not according to the PHB

"Animals, traps, poisons, and other potential perils are not evil, and as such this spell does not detect them" -3.5e PHB pg.218

Poisons themselves are not evil, but using them is - although a specific exemption is called out for Drow Poison, I believe, as it deals no ability damage. This is in one of the alignment books, I think? I'm sure people more on the ball about this than I can dredge up the quotation on that one.

[NigelWalmsley]

the harm of cars is possible to contain and mitigate, the downside is both gradual and quantifiable, rulebreakers can be traced and punished, no viable alternatives exist to cars in current society, etc.

All of those either apply to negative energy or don't apply to cars.

You can mitigate the impacts by using less brutal techniques for creating undead. You could also fund organizations to hunt down spontaneous undead. Frankly, if an adventuring necromancer has even one adventure where he saves a town from marauding zombies, he's net positive on loose undead for his whole career.

I would strongly contest that global warming is "quantifiable". The general consensus is that you can't attribute particular natural disasters to global warming, or accurately assess how much worse any particular disaster is because of it. And an increase in the number of undead is definitely gradual. It's not like at the 101st Animate Dead, the Sign of Atropus (or whatever the term for the thing from Elder Evils is) turns on.

You could establish Necromancy Emissions standards in the same way countries establish Carbon Emissions standards. In both cases it's an industrial process you can check for people doing and punish for doing wrong. In many ways it's easier to track necromancers, because you have access to the full suite of divination magic.

If the act was truly Evil, it wouldn't matter if there were no alternatives. If making cars required something we agreed was really Evil, like torturing someone to death, no one would say "well, we can't do better, guess we'll have to keep up the torture". And before you say that's unfair, you're the one who's insisting that this is Evil.

What makes you think it isn't evil? Fell Animate is a feat, they usually don't get alignment descriptors. You are however creating undead, which is an evil act per BoVD pg. 8.

You seem to be missing the point again. Yes, BoVD says it's Evil. But other sources say it isn't. You certainly could square that circle by declaring BoVD to be correct, but you could also square it by saying that BoVD is a general claim that is superseded by the specific non-Evil-ness of Fell Animate.

Moreover, you're still making the mistake of confusing what is essentially physics with morality.

Poisons themselves are not evil, but using them is - although a specific exemption is called out for Drow Poison, I believe, as it deals no ability damage. This is in one of the alignment books, I think? I'm sure people more on the ball about this than I can dredge up the quotation on that one.

It's in the Book of Exalted Deeds I believe. It calls out poison use as Evil, meaning every surgeon who's done life-saving surgery to someone under anesthetic and every park ranger who's sedated a dangerous animal for transport is Evil. Now, you can see in this thread that the people pushing book morality understand that that's insane, but you can't reject that and demand we keep the RAW treatment of undead. Either the alignment rules are rules, or they aren't.

[Segev]

All of those either apply to negative energy or don't apply to cars.

You can mitigate the impacts by using less brutal techniques for creating undead. You could also fund organizations to hunt down spontaneous undead. Frankly, if an adventuring necromancer has even one adventure where he saves a town from marauding zombies, he's net positive on loose undead for his whole career.

I would strongly contest that global warming is "quantifiable". The general consensus is that you can't attribute particular natural disasters to global warming, or accurately assess how much worse any particular disaster is because of it. And an increase in the number of undead is definitely gradual. It's not like at the 101st Animate Dead, the Sign of Atropus (or whatever the term for the thing from Elder Evils is) turns on.

You could establish Necromancy Emissions standards in the same way countries establish Carbon Emissions standards. In both cases it's an industrial process you can check for people doing and punish for doing wrong. In many ways it's easier to track necromancers, because you have access to the full suite of divination magic.

If the act was truly Evil, it wouldn't matter if there were no alternatives. If making cars required something we agreed was really Evil, like torturing someone to death, no one would say "well, we can't do better, guess we'll have to keep up the torture". And before you say that's unfair, you're the one who's insisting that this is Evil.



You seem to be missing the point again. Yes, BoVD says it's Evil. But other sources say it isn't. You certainly could square that circle by declaring BoVD to be correct, but you could also square it by saying that BoVD is a general claim that is superseded by the specific non-Evil-ness of Fell Animate.

Moreover, you're still making the mistake of confusing what is essentially physics with morality.



It's in the Book of Exalted Deeds I believe. It calls out poison use as Evil, meaning every surgeon who's done life-saving surgery to someone under anesthetic and every park ranger who's sedated a dangerous animal for transport is Evil. Now, you can see in this thread that the people pushing book morality understand that that's insane, but you can't reject that and demand we keep the RAW treatment of undead. Either the alignment rules are rules, or they aren't.

All well-said. I just want to point out again that I don't mind animate dead being an evil spell to cast. I just want the reason it's evil to make sense (to me). Like I said, I don't even mind them doing the "evil pollution" thing, on reflection - I don't mind Evil Auras/miasma/whatever generating from strong evil or concentrations of evil. But I want that as an effect of doing real evil, not as an effect that MAKES something evil to do.

i.e., I'm okay with, "It creates evil miasma because it does something evil." I am not okay with, "It creates evil miasma and that makes it evil."

[Psyren]

If the act was truly Evil, it wouldn't matter if there were no alternatives.

This I think is the core of the problem some of you are having; in D&D, there's a difference between an act being evil and being unjustifiable. Circumstances, especially extreme ones, can make an evil act the best solution to a given problem, and that is taken into account in D&D settings by the actor's alignment and, ultimately, the judgement they face when being assigned an afterlife.

Now granted, I do find most of the hypothetical scenarios presented where whipping up a skeleton is presented as the only solution to be paper-thin and contrived excuses to let a selfish necromancer do their thing unchallenged, but that doesn't mean such a scenario is totally impossible.

You can mitigate the impacts by using less brutal techniques for creating undead. You could also fund organizations to hunt down spontaneous undead. Frankly, if an adventuring necromancer has even one adventure where he saves a town from marauding zombies, he's net positive on loose undead for his whole career.

Only if he stops making undead after saving that town, and potentially not even then, depending on the damage he did (or is continuing to unrepentantly do.)

I would strongly contest that global warming is "quantifiable". The general consensus is that you can't attribute particular natural disasters to global warming, or accurately assess how much worse any particular disaster is because of it. And an increase in the number of undead is definitely gradual. It's not like at the 101st Animate Dead, the Sign of Atropus (or whatever the term for the thing from Elder Evils is) turns on.

While it's difficult to measure the true impact of something like pollution, a reasonable approximation is still possible. There's still only a given amount of pollutants that a single car can contribute to a given area over a given period of time. Cars can't create mass - the pollutants out will always correlate to the substances (e.g. fuel) put into them.

Negative energy has no such constraints. For the sake of charity, let's put aside the extreme (yet still possible) idea that just one more skeleton in your army means an Atropal shows up somewhere and threatens an unknowable mass of innocents. Even if your army of skeletons results in, say, just one extra Shadow or Wight - left unchecked, you can have actually caused throngs of them to come into being, because the limit of spawn-creating undead is usually just having living material to convert. Alternatively, it could cause that next cleric/monk who dies after breaking their vow to become a huecuva, and the presence of an intelligent spellcasting undead is far more dangerous to the world than passive pollutants.

You could establish Necromancy Emissions standards in the same way countries establish Carbon Emissions standards.

That sounds like a great goal for a campaign, and I hope you have fun at your table figuring out what those should be and researching necromancy magic that can fall within those boundaries. That doesn't mean that the default state of this (i.e. absent such standards) shouldn't be tagged evil.

You seem to be missing the point again. Yes, BoVD says it's Evil. But other sources say it isn't.

A source not saying anything one way or the other is not a refutation of another source saying it's evil.

It's in the Book of Exalted Deeds I believe. It calls out poison use as Evil, meaning every surgeon who's done life-saving surgery to someone under anesthetic and every park ranger who's sedated a dangerous animal for transport is Evil. Now, you can see in this thread that the people pushing book morality understand that that's insane, but you can't reject that and demand we keep the RAW treatment of undead. Either the alignment rules are rules, or they aren't.

Black and White Fallacy. We can disagree with poison's label because it is inadequately supported, while thinking the label on undead is much more robust. Furthermore, the book that says poison is evil is not actually the same book as the ones that say making undead is.

[Quertus]

I'm just saying, they clearly explained it. If, like Segev, you dislike the explanations, that's your prerogative, but don't pretend it was never explained at all.

I'm pretty persistently AFB - can *anyone* give me a simple, binary answer to my question: were the reasons given in Libris Mortis intended as RAW (like the grappling rules, or "Fireball is a 3rd level Sorcerer/Wizard spell"), clearly meant to apply to all 3e unless the GM is house ruling, or was it given as *optional* content (like milestone XP or gestalt) or campaign-specific content (like Kryn has 3 moons, or what cities / NPCs / gods are present in any given world), that *isn't* expected to be "true for all 3e content unless otherwise noted".

Whether or not I "like" the explanation comes second to the nature of whether all worlds are on the backs of giant turtles, or whether that's one *possible* explanation for how celestial objects move.

[SangoProduction]

It is absolutely amazing (and not sarcastically) that a thread can go on for 8 pages based solely on a single tangential complaint about an [Evil] tag on a spell.

I would have expected things to veer off once again by 8 pages, but no, they are remarkably consistent. lol. Across like a week. I've never seen any sort of interaction remain on topic for a fraction as long as this thread has. And it's amazing.

[Asmotherion]

Only if negative energy and death (no matter the cause) are inherently evil. Which they aren't.

Likewise, healing should be evil for tipping the balance (and summoning the Jenova expy Elder Evil). Which it isn't.

Negative energy is, by definition, very much evil. If that was not enough, it is stated across multiple sources.

Also, if you're looking for mechanical reason, all spells that animate dead have the Evil tag.

For a more lore-wise explaination:

A) Negative Energy is inherently Evil. It needs evil intent to attune to it and channel it.

B) You are, knowingly and of your own free will, creating something whose very nature is to harm and destroy life. Even if you want to put it to good use (which, could be a balancing factor), it's still an evil act.

C) Necromancy uses magic to suppress the free will of the undead to make them do your bidding. Slavery is an act of Evil (As per Book of Vile Darkness).

D) Finally, Animation Necromancy not only shows disrespect to the Dead, it also prevents them from being resurected (at least by more common spells). And, to be honest, even if a non-necromancer used your ancestor's bones or dead body for anything, especially without your permission, you'd probably be pretty mad at them.

So, a necromancer who would animate some skeletons in order to have them farm to provide free food for the poor, is still an evil guy, who may have some good intentions, or at the very least a Neutral guy with evil tendencies.

In a nutshell, most evil people are neither complete sociopaths, nor of the "stereotypical cartoon evil" type. They are people, who may have some good intentions, but often cross the line of "the ends justify the means".

[hamishspence]

Negative energy is, by definition, very much evil. If that was not enough, it is stated across multiple sources.

Some negative energy spells lack the [Evil] tag. The Inflict X Wounds series, for example.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/in...ightWounds.htm

Only an evil, or "shady Neutral" cleric can spontaneously convert any spell into an Inflict X Wounds spell of the appropriate level:

Spontaneous Casting
A good cleric (or a neutral cleric of a good deity) can channel stored spell energy into healing spells that the cleric did not prepare ahead of time. The cleric can "lose" any prepared spell that is not a domain spell in order to cast any cure spell of the same spell level or lower (a cure spell is any spell with "cure" in its name).

An evil cleric (or a neutral cleric of an evil deity), can’t convert prepared spells to cure spells but can convert them to inflict spells (an inflict spell is one with "inflict" in its name).

A cleric who is neither good nor evil and whose deity is neither good nor evil can convert spells to either cure spells or inflict spells (player’s choice). Once the player makes this choice, it cannot be reversed. This choice also determines whether the cleric turns or commands undead.

but casting the spell itself, is not evil, even if Rebuking/Commanding Undead (as opposed to Turning them) is:

Neutral Clerics and Undead
A cleric of neutral alignment can either turn undead but not rebuke them, or rebuke undead but not turn them. See Turn or Rebuke Undead for more information.

Even if a cleric is neutral, channeling positive energy is a good act and channeling negative energy is evil.

The Negative Energy Plane itself, lacks the Evil tag:

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/planes.ht...iveEnergyPlane

a Good being does not get the same penalties for being there, that they would get from visiting one of the deeper Lower Planes:

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/planes.ht...nedEvilAligned


There's certainly a connection between Negative Energy and evil - but it's not as straightforward as "The energy simply is evil".

[NigelWalmsley]

This I think is the core of the problem some of you are having; in D&D, there's a difference between an act being evil and being unjustifiable.

I think the problem you're having is that you've backed yourself into a corner based on alignment rules that are incoherent and are making a distinction without a difference.

Only if he stops making undead after saving that town, and potentially not even then, depending on the damage he did (or is continuing to unrepentantly do.)

No. If you were willing to take the absolutist stance on pollution, maybe you'd have a case. But you accept that there are balancing tests based on utility. That means that if he kills more spontaneous undead than his animation causes, he's making a net-positive impact. Since we don't actually know how many spontaneous undead his actions cause, I am going to claim that it's less than one adventure's worth, and there's no argument you can make against me.

A source not saying anything one way or the other is not a refutation of another source saying it's evil.

A source not giving it the Evil tag is a refutation of it being Evil. Otherwise any action has the potential to retroactively become Evil when a new book is printed (or when someone buys an existing book that says "actually all Fire magic is Evil").

We can disagree with poison's label because it is inadequately supported, while thinking the label on undead is much more robust.

You can think that. But unless you're willing to accept the things the books say generally, you can't use "book says it" as an argument. You can agree with the other arguments it makes, but the only authority those arguments have is Psyren's, not the rules. So you have to be more convincing than just "look it says Evil".

Negative energy is, by definition, very much evil. If that was not enough, it is stated across multiple sources.

Except the Negative Energy Plane isn't Evil-aligned. Nor are the creatures that are made of negative energy. There are certainly multiple sources pushing the Crawling Darkness view, but there are also multiple sources pushing the Playing With Fire one.

[Efrate]

Taking a non intelligent undeads free will is not evil, they do not have the capacity to make a choice meaning they have no free will. They run on instinct. Is hunting something for food evil? A wolf hunts and kills a deer, but that isn't evil. It's not murder because that requires a conscious effort, which they lack. The blurb about hating the living is unsupportable by their lack of intelligence.

Dominate and charm are not evil. Sanctify the wicked is [Good], exalted good. Can a non intelligent undead be a slave? Can a dog? Or golem?

[Ashtagon]

My take on it...

Creating "mindless" undead is essentially an evil act, because that undead-animating force causes continuing torture on the soul that was once linked to the body. It doesn't take that soul away from its afterlife or bind it in any way, but does cause it pain.

And torture is evil, right?

In contrast, using animate object on the skeleton is just in bad taste, but not actually evil, because doing so doesn't torture the soul.

I suppose if you were to somehow create undead from a body that either never housed a soul or does not even nominally have planar access to the resting place of the soul associated with it, then you're good to go. But for most planes, that is quite a corner case.

[hamishspence]

Even if negative energy itself is not evil, there are so many ties between Negative Energy and Evil, that it says something about the way the universe is set up. At least in 3.5.

Evil clerics, even Evil clerics of Neutral deities, always get Rebuke Undead (and Cast Inflict Spells Spontaneously).

Undead always detect as Evil, using the Detect Evil spell, even if their alignment is Neutral or Good (because the Detect Evil spell has an Undead line, not an Evil Undead line).

Many undead have "always (X) Evil" in their alignment line.

Gods with the Undeath domain are pretty much always Evil.

Hades, Plane of Neutral Evil, has Negative Dominant areas (as I recall, at least).

[Psyren]

I think the problem you're having is that you've backed yourself into a corner based on alignment rules that are incoherent and are making a distinction without a difference.

I'm not in a corner at all. Not only are the rules clear, the rationale behind making them that way is also clear.

I am going to claim that it's less than one adventure's worth, and there's no argument you can make against me.

As I've said, if that's how your table wants to rule it go nuts. By RAW it's still evil.

A source not giving it the Evil tag is a refutation of it being Evil.

Feats don't get descriptors like that, try again.

You can think that. But unless you're willing to accept the things the books say generally, you can't use "book says it" as an argument.

Sure I can, and there's no argument you can make against me

Less facetiously, even if I agreed with you that the poison rule is somehow a reason to set my whole book on fire (it's not), it's not even in the same book.

[Unavenger]

Feats don't get descriptors like that, try again.

Nothing says they can't give a descriptor, as Energy Admixture does, and not giving the spell the [evil] descriptor is a tacit admission that the spell is not evil. His try was perfectly valid the first time. The source does not give it, the fell animated spell, the [evil] descriptor, which is an admission that the spell is not an evil one. Acid spells have the acid descriptor and evil ones the evil descriptor.

[Psyren]

Nothing says they can't give a descriptor, as Energy Admixture does, and not giving the spell the [evil] descriptor is a tacit admission that the spell is not evil.

Not how RAW works.

Rule A says doing X is evil.
Rule B (the feat that allows certain spells to do X) is silent, saying nothing on the subject.

There is no contradiction to A, so A stands. Even if there were such a contradiction, then you'd have to consider whether A or B was the primary source or a specific exception to resolve that contradiction.

You might argue that it would be cleaner or more elegant if B repeated or reinforced A, but it's not required for A to still exist.

[137beth]

Also, as to the whole "undead cause harm by existing" thing...

Humans, simply by living, constantly release pollution (CO₂). And humans can only be sustained by consuming the corpses of other living beings (unlike undead, who don't need to eat).

If either of those factors make undead evil, then humans are inherently evil and creating humans is also inherently evil.

[Unavenger]

Not how RAW works.

Rule A says doing X is evil.
Rule B (the feat that allows certain spells to do X) is silent, saying nothing on the subject.

There is no contradiction to A, so A stands. Even if there were such a contradiction, then you'd have to consider whether A or B was the primary source or a specific exception to resolve that contradiction.

You might argue that it would be cleaner or more elegant if B repeated or reinforced A, but it's not required for A to still exist.

Fine, you then end up with a spell which is always evil but never [evil] and no specification of what specifically that means.

Because I have no particular side in this fight though, maintaining as I do that the whole thing is rather silly...

Humans, simply by living, constantly release pollution (CO₂). And humans can only be sustained by consuming the corpses of other living beings (unlike undead, who don't need to eat).

...I should point out that it's a somewhat animal-centric view that carbon dioxide is the pollution, and not oxygen, and the plants might argue the opposite if we could hear their sides of the argument. Referring to dead plants as the corpses of other living beings is also somewhat melodramatic, and I am fully prepared to accept "Eating animals is unethical" as a conclusion while not accepting "Eating plants is unethical", so if you have human-eating or even cow-eating zombies then you can easily argue that they are worse than at least some humans.

[Psyren]

Also, as to the whole "undead cause harm by existing" thing...

Humans, simply by living, constantly release pollution (CO₂). And humans can only be sustained by consuming the corpses of other living beings (unlike undead, who don't need to eat).

If either of those factors make undead evil, then humans are inherently evil and creating humans is also inherently evil.

There are living creatures that need CO₂ to survive (e.g. plants.) It thus serves a purpose on the material.

Remind me, which ones need negative energy or spontaneous undead?