How can a mindless being have a motivation?
The RAW consider skeletons and zombies to be mindless undead.
Why? Because certain spells targeting undead automatically succeed against mindless undead.
So either they have a mind (as well as a Neutral Evil alignment) and thus get a save against those spells, or are actually mindless and get the True Neutral alignment. Of course most probably take a third option that completely misses the point I am trying to make here.
|
Beyond that is pretty irrelevant. Further, the skeleton entry in the bestiary says diddly squat about them randomly wandering around murdering people. What it does say is they possess an "evil cunning" which allows them to have proficiency with weapons. That's all.They're also "always neutral evil."
Animal attacks could still be an issue. Wild animals won't look for meat but they CAN lash out at the vile unnatural void in their midst. Obviously it varies from table-to-table but a popular meme is that things of nature fear and hate beings of necrotic negative energy.
To kind of build on this point about living animal interaction what about if you get the opposite effect? It says in the core rulebook that animals will not attack unnatural creatures (like undead) on their own unless extensively trained to do so. So what about if instead of attacking said undead they don't go near them or the places they inhabit? Wolves and deer start avoiding farms with all these undead oxen floating about because they can sense how wrong it is and prefer to move on rather than deal with them? At first farmers think this a boon because it scares off a lot of predators and pests that would impair their livelihood and people start to pick it up in bulk. But eventually crops start failing and people can't seem to understand why, turns out that even the vermin are turned off by the skeletal hordes meandering through and being contained in and around all these properties and are moving away, causing pollination via insects to plummet. Then you start to see all these farms reeling as their crops fail and none of them know why let alone can fathom that their undead outsourcing is literally scaring off all the natural pollinators and other wildlife their farms need to function.
All that being said I still think this would be a cool idea, could "work", and would dig playing a game in an area where this is an issue or just a fact of life.
|
I'm just going to point out a basic economic reason that it would be a bad choice (ignoring any potential undead issues) - too high of a start-up cost makes it stink for opportunity cost.
That 300gp (or less if you make it yourself - but your work/effort would have its own value) cost will take years and years to earn back. A decade at least. The opportunity cost is too high.
It's the same reason that solar panels are a bad investment. (purely on an economic basis - please don't bring up global warming etc as it's irrelevant here) Sure - the energy is 'free' - though with some upkeep costs - but only after a very high initial investment. The opportunity cost is too high.
If you don't spend that $ on skeletal oxen or solar panels, you wouldn't otherwise just hide it in a hole in the ground pirate style - you'd invest it in something else (like live oxen or coal) which would end up making you more money faster.
So - from a purely economic perspective could you do it? Yes.
Is it a good investment? No. (Ignoring gov subsidies - but that seems unlikely for skeletal oxen.)
|
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
|
How can a mindless being have a motivation?
The RAW consider skeletons and zombies to be mindless undead.
Why? Because certain spells targeting undead automatically succeed against mindless undead.
So either they have a mind (as well as a Neutral Evil alignment) and thus get a save against those spells, or are actually mindless and get the True Neutral alignment. Of course most probably take a third option that completely misses the point I am trying to make here.
The only point I see is a false dichotomy - alignment doesn't have to be motivation, it can be a description of actions. Mindless undead default to acting evil, therefore they are evil.
Undead really aren't robots - you want constructs for that. You can even make constructs out of dead bodies if you like, and they avoid many of the issues with undead. But constructs are a lot more expensive? Quality costs. Conversely, undead are killing machines that happen to be able to be given other orders.
Also, doc the grey, I like how you think regarding the helpful animals being driven away as well.
Beyond that is pretty irrelevant. Further, the skeleton entry in the bestiary says diddly squat about them randomly wandering around murdering people. What it does say is they possess an "evil cunning" which allows them to have proficiency with weapons. That's all.They're also "always neutral evil."
Animal attacks could still be an issue. Wild animals won't look for meat but they CAN lash out at the vile unnatural void in their midst. Obviously it varies from table-to-table but a popular meme is that things of nature fear and hate beings of necrotic negative energy.
To kind of build on this point about living animal interaction what about if you get the opposite effect? It says in the core rulebook that animals will not attack unnatural creatures (like undead) on their own unless extensively trained to do so. So what about if instead of attacking said undead they don't go near them or the places they inhabit? Wolves and deer start avoiding farms with all these undead oxen floating about because they can sense how wrong it is and prefer to move on rather than deal with them? At first farmers think this a boon because it scares off a lot of predators and pests that would impair their livelihood and people start to pick it up in bulk. But eventually crops start failing and people can't seem to understand why, turns out that even the vermin are turned off by the skeletal hordes meandering through and being contained in and around all these properties and are moving away, causing pollination via insects to plummet. Then you start to see all these farms reeling as their crops fail and none of them know why let alone can fathom that their undead outsourcing is literally scaring off all the natural pollinators and other wildlife their farms need to function.
All that being said I still think this would be a cool idea, could "work", and would dig playing a game in an area where this is an issue or just a fact of life.
Insects being mindless will still pollinate, because they do not care.
|
|
...Beyond that is pretty irrelevant. Further, the skeleton entry in the bestiary says diddly squat about them randomly wandering around murdering people. What it does say is they possess an "evil cunning" which allows them to have proficiency with weapons. That's all.They're also "always neutral evil."
Animal attacks could still be an issue. Wild animals won't look for meat but they CAN lash out at the vile unnatural void in their midst. Obviously it varies from table-to-table but a popular meme is that things of nature fear and hate beings of necrotic negative energy.
To kind of build on this point about living animal interaction what about if you get the opposite effect? It says in the core rulebook that animals will not attack unnatural creatures (like undead) on their own unless extensively trained to do so. So what about if instead of attacking said undead they don't go near them or the places they inhabit? Wolves and deer start avoiding farms with all these undead oxen floating about because they can sense how wrong it is and prefer to move on rather than deal with them? At first farmers think this a boon because it scares off a lot of predators and pests that would impair their livelihood and people start to pick it up in bulk. But eventually crops start failing and people can't seem to understand why, turns out that even the vermin are turned off by the skeletal hordes meandering through and being contained in and around all these properties and are moving away, causing pollination via insects to plummet. Then you start to see all these farms reeling as their crops fail and none of them know why let alone can fathom that their undead outsourcing is literally scaring off all the natural pollinators and other wildlife their farms need to function.
All that being said I still think this would be a cool idea, could "work", and would dig playing a game in an area where this is an issue or just a fact of life.
Mindlessness doesn't mean they couldn't be affected. They are living creatures that have functioning brains so they have to think at some capacity, it's just likely so alien to our own that we wouldn't understand it. Either way if insects are unaffected how would vanilla zombies, vampires, liches, and other corporeal undead survive long term? I mean if they aren't somehow unattractive to vermin wouldn't most zombies just rot out over the first few weeks as flies and other carrion eaters consume their fleshy remains?
|
|
I'm just going to point out a basic economic reason that it would be a bad choice (ignoring any potential undead issues) - too high of a start-up cost makes it stink for opportunity cost.
That 300gp (or less if you make it yourself - but your work/effort would have its own value) cost will take years and years to earn back. A decade at least. The opportunity cost is too high.
It's the same reason that solar panels are a bad investment. (purely on an economic basis - please don't bring up global warming etc as it's irrelevant here) Sure - the energy is 'free' - though with some upkeep costs - but only after a very high initial investment. The opportunity cost is too high.
If you don't spend that $ on skeletal oxen or solar panels, you wouldn't otherwise just hide it in a hole in the ground pirate style - you'd invest it in something else (like live oxen or coal) which would end up making you more money faster.
So - from a purely economic perspective could you do it? Yes.
Is it a good investment? No. (Ignoring gov subsidies - but that seems unlikely for skeletal oxen.)
That's assuming you are just talking humans. Once you talk about elves, dwarves, or even the gnomes from the core 7 a decade can be almost nothing. Even without those considerations payment doesn't have to be that crazy. Realize if we are talking about a true european dark age society most of these farmers don't even own their land their lord does and on top of that is the guy who would likely be sanctioning the use of undead one way or another. If the necromancer is selling this business he is likely getting employed by, sanctioned by, and paid by the lord of whatever land these farmers are living in not the farmers themselves. And if that's happening he can easily recoup his losses considering he's likely pitched his business on how cheap it is compared to just having the peasants do it along with owning and maintaining living beasts of burden and offers said ruler more control over his vassals.
Hell, I'd be willing to go one step farther and say you could just have a lord or Baron making them himself. As royalty he's likely the guy with the most connections to actually get the education to learn how to animate the dead so it stands to reason he might be the one doing it rather than an outside source. On top of that it prevents said lord from having to worry both about the power an outside necromancer would start to gain over his people and helps cement his control therein. You want to rebel? Fine, I free my skeletal oxen or call them up against you, or just have them come home. At best you now have to fight a small horde of undead bovines, at worst your primary tools have now walked off and people starve. Minor upside though as a commoner you can have a lord who can turn your tools into defense weapons to protect you and your family.
In geb, the food they grow is to feed their food.
|
|
...That's assuming you are just talking humans. Once you talk about elves, dwarves, or even the gnomes from the core 7 a decade can be almost nothing. Even without those considerations payment doesn't have to be that crazy. Realize if we are talking about a true european dark age society most of these farmers don't even own their land their lord does and on top of that is the guy who would likely be sanctioning the use of undead one way or another. If the necromancer is selling this business he is likely getting employed by, sanctioned by, and paid by the lord of whatever land these farmers are living in not the farmers themselves. And if that's happening he can easily recoup his losses considering he's likely pitched his business on how cheap it is compared to just having the peasants do it along with owning and maintaining living beasts of burden andI'm just going to point out a basic economic reason that it would be a bad choice (ignoring any potential undead issues) - too high of a start-up cost makes it stink for opportunity cost.
That 300gp (or less if you make it yourself - but your work/effort would have its own value) cost will take years and years to earn back. A decade at least. The opportunity cost is too high.
It's the same reason that solar panels are a bad investment. (purely on an economic basis - please don't bring up global warming etc as it's irrelevant here) Sure - the energy is 'free' - though with some upkeep costs - but only after a very high initial investment. The opportunity cost is too high.
If you don't spend that $ on skeletal oxen or solar panels, you wouldn't otherwise just hide it in a hole in the ground pirate style - you'd invest it in something else (like live oxen or coal) which would end up making you more money faster.
So - from a purely economic perspective could you do it? Yes.
Is it a good investment? No. (Ignoring gov subsidies - but that seems unlikely for skeletal oxen.)
Ehh you totally could, but then you have to deal with all that distributed power amongst your necromancers, the worry that your king or other barons don't recognize you as a duke since you are basically leading an army of corpses, or just the simple fact that if they are all dead then who grovels to you or gives you taxes? Also means that said duke has to manage all that farming stuff himself which sounds like something a noble is probably not that interested in doing. All that said though the point is that it's totally plausible it's just about whether or not you are interested in exploring the whole question, and so far there seem to be a lot of interesting questions within it to explore.
|
|
That's assuming you are just talking humans. Once you talk about elves, dwarves, or even the gnomes from the core 7 a decade can be almost nothing.
Opportunity cost has nothing to do with average lifespans. It means that investing that same $ in something else will make you more $ back in a shorter time. It's why some companies are closed down despite being slightly profitable. Their slight profit isn't worth tying up so much capital which could do more in other ways.
Even without those considerations payment doesn't have to be that crazy. Realize if we are talking about a true european dark age society most of these farmers don't even own their land their lord does and on top of that is the guy who would likely be sanctioning the use of undead one way or another.
Again - that has nothing to do with the cost of competing goods. Namely - the cost of live cattle/horses. They have secondary advantages as well. You can eat them / breed them / get fertilizer from them etc.
In geb, the food they grow is to feed their food.
Geb has a surplus that they export - according to the Inner Sea World Guide, Nex is actually one of their main buyers.
Amusingly, one of the main hazards to travelers in Geb is uncontrolled packs of fast zombies.
The biggest restriction on mindless undead labor is your control cap. Animate dead lets you control up to four times your caster level in hit dice; having the command undead feat would let you control an chunk of hit dice equal to your level.
So a 5th level cleric of Urgathoa with command undead feat could control 25 hit dice worth of skeletons without burning additional additional resources on controlling more.
Now, mindless undead are, well, mindless, so it'd take some frequent supervision to keep them working usefully -- without further orders, I'd expect a skellie that finished hoeing a row to just go back and start over it again, because it's gonna hoe that row. if it breaks the hoe trying to smash a rock, it'll probably bend down and do it with its claws.
So supervising the things requires a relatively constant amount of supervision, but it's certainly doable.
Also, as untrained laborers the horde of skellies generates 1 sp per skeleton per day. I'll assume no cow skeletons currently active, which would eat up more hit dice.
Assuming the L5 priest of Urgathoa has max ranks in profession (Farmer) because it's his or her day job... probably a starting wisdom of 17, 18 from leveling... So +12... So taking ten, this modest skellie farm generates 11 gold per week from the priest's personal efforts/management, and 2.5 gold per day from the efforts of the undead labor force (assigning the value of the labor to the controller), coming out to about 23.5 gold per week (assuming the priest takes weekends off to go party, because Urgathoan).
Since that work force cost 625 gold to make, it means the necro-farmer takes about 26 weeks to break even with the animation costs. Not wonderful by a long stretch, but it's a living(?) and if you're a Gebbite you're probably planning to become a juju zombie or something else that exists forever anyways.
My math is probably wonky.
I'd expect a necro-farm to have sheds with pits for storing uncontrolled undead, where they'd be ordered into a pit before releasing control. (Because, say, it's time to go open the window to the undead ox shed and take control of the skeloxen through the safety of the window they don't fit through).
Heh. I don't buy Ashiel's pacifist skeletons that just sit around and do nothing if uncontrolled, but keeping your mindless undead out of trouble just requires taking some precautions.
Think of 'em like house cats that never, ever get bored with hunting and killing, and can never kill enough to be satisfied. Skeletons are always evil, but it's not a terribly sophisticated evil - it's hurting and killing entirely for the sake of hurting and killing, just like those little boys who actually go through the trouble of pulling the wings off of flies.
If you don't want your uncontrolled skeletons chasing children/squirrels, just stick them somewhere where they don't have the opportunity. It's not like they're smart enough to figure out locks.
Aside: Zombies and diseases - Let me put it this way - your kitchen counter is immune to diseases too, but that doesn't mean your kitchen counter is inherently sterile and free of pathogens =P
|
|
Geb has a surplus that they export - according to the Inner Sea World Guide, Nex is actually one of their main buyers.
Etc
I agree that it can be done - ballparking how you say. But it just seems to me that a level 5 cleric could make more scratch doing other things. And you didn't even include in your costs quite a few things.
1. Buildings etc to store those uncontrolled undead.
2. Tools. You've gotta expect undead to be harder on tools than people are. So besides the initial cost, they're going to break them more often.
3. Training of the cleric. How much it costs is debatable - but it definitely isn't especially low. So - you're training up a level 5 cleric so that he can be as effective as 3-4 joe schmo farmers after spending hundreds of more gold?
4. It wouldn't happen often since he can heal himself - but what if the cleric dies? Not necessarily to a band of roving adventurers. What if a bear eats him? What if a rival cleric kills him? Etc. That's probably where many of the bands of roving undead come from.
5. Land efficiency. I seriously doubt that skeletons are going to be as effiecient in their land usage. Which goes back to my previous comment about about opportunity cost. Though admittedly - that one's debatable.
6. Cost of the bodies. I realize that it wouldn't be high if you wait for people to die - but it costs something. Even if the gov requires people to turn over all family members' corpses or something, it still has travel costs etc associated with it.
7. Turnover. Like #4, it wouldn't happen often, but OCCASIONALLY a skeleton is going to be destroyed somehow. And unlike having a bunch of serfs manning your fields - skeletons don't reproduce, so you'll sometimes have to spend more gold on onyx.
I'd kind of assumed a set-up like Geb, where reanimation of dead serfs/chattel is mandatory. The cleric-farmer would be working a plot of land belonging to his temple as part of his temple duties.
Some of this stuff would probably be better handled by kingdom or downtime rules, which I haven't looked at in a long time.
|
|
I'd kind of assumed a set-up like Geb, where reanimation of dead serfs/chattel is mandatory. The cleric-farmer would be working a plot of land belonging to his temple as part of his temple duties.
Some of this stuff would probably be better handled by kingdom or downtime rules, which I haven't looked at in a long time.
I sort of figured - which is why I mentioned in #6 that it would still have the travel costs associated. (In Geb that'd be nearly the only cost.)
Really makes more sense to use them as energy sources rather than other more complicated stuff like farming. Skelly powered aquaducts and flour mills and so forth. Throw em on a hamster wheel and tell em to walk or run.
|
|
Assuming a 0% inflation rate, you break even halfway through the seventh year on each ox.
Considering Pathfinder is built on the quite literal gold standard - 0% give or take is likely. It was only after we got off the gold standard that inflation became common. (When we got off for practical purposes back under FDR, not officially under Nixon.) There'd be a bit of up & down with the economy, but long-term it'd be 0ish.
Historically, back when money was coinage, long-term inflation was only when governments started to debase their own currency by printing smaller or more impure coins and thinking that no one would notice.
(Don't even get me started on the theory that a low inflation is good for the economy. It too is based on the idea that people are too stupid to notice.)
|
So, I was interested in seeing what the bestiary had to say with regards to the zombies and skeletons and it appears they say different things
Skeletons are the animated bones of the dead, brought to unlife through foul magic. While most skeletons are mindless automatons, they still possess an evil cunning imparted to them by their animating force—a cunning that allows them to wield weapons and wear armor.So the evil cunning lets them use weapons and armor, but doesn't spell out anything else it might do.
I'll also note that the alignment is listed as Neutral Evil and there is no mention about "Always" or other frequency. All I can find on Alignment is from the intro section which says
Alignment, Size, and Type: While a monster's size and type remain constant (unless changed by the application of templates or other unusual modifiers), alignment is far more fluid. The alignments listed for each monster in this book represent the norm for those monsters—they can vary as you require them to in order to serve the needs of your campaign. Only in the case of relatively unintelligent monsters (creatures with an Intelligence of 2 or lower are almost never anything other than neutral) and planar monsters (outsiders with alignments other than those listed are unusual and typically outcasts from their kind) is the listed alignment relatively unchangeable.Which seems to support that low intelligence/mindless creatures are generally neutral, while aligned outsiders generally fixed and the rest of the monsters can vary to a greater degree.
Now, I do think that there is some point regarding zombies and their innate unneighbourly behaviour.
...
Zombies are the animated corpses of dead creatures, forced into foul unlife via necromantic magic like animate dead. While the most commonly encountered zombies are slow and tough, others possess a variety of traits, allowing them to spread disease or move with
Cited a few times already, and I am very surprised on how people still miss it:
Creating a Skeleton
“Skeleton” is an acquired template that can be added to any corporeal creature (other than an undead) that has a skeletal system (referred to hereafter as the base creature).
...
Alignment: Always neutral evil.
Umm... about zombies earning their keep...
Kaer Maga anyone?
I forgot about that example. Specifically, the Twice-Born in the Ankar-Tedistrict of Kaer Maga. Although I have to say that at population 8000, Kaer Maga seems awfully small to have both all this stuff and the various other things that it also has.
Cited a few times already, and I am very surprised on how people still miss it:
Creating a Skeleton
“Skeleton” is an acquired template that can be added to any corporeal creature (other than an undead) that has a skeletal system (referred to hereafter as the base creature).
...
Alignment: Always neutral evil.
no one missed it. it just isn't relevant. a mindless NE skeleton has no free will. if it is under your control, you can command it to do a whole lot of nothing until you tell it to do something else. so, it's effective alignment is N because it's a tool. a tool that detects as evil, but a tool nonetheless.
|
|
no one missed it. it just isn't relevant. a mindless NE skeleton has no free will. if it is under your control, you can command it to do a whole lot of nothing until you tell it to do something else. so, it's effective alignment is N because it's a tool. a tool that detects as evil, but a tool nonetheless.Cited a few times already, and I am very surprised on how people still miss it:
Creating a Skeleton
“Skeleton” is an acquired template that can be added to any corporeal creature (other than an undead) that has a skeletal system (referred to hereafter as the base creature).
...
Alignment: Always neutral evil.
Right. But what if you die? Then it's uncontrolled and starts to do what uncontrolled skeletons do...which there's very little reason to assume is 'nothing'.
Is a skeleton with a broom the Roomba of Golarion?