Animate dead will create a typical average skeleton, which is thus always neutral evil, you can not choose to create neutral good skeletons.
Oh, I missed checking the template, just checked an average human skeleton. That's a very fair point.
Maybe an easy way to houserule a reason for this single case (as it seems to be this case especially that is a problem) is that Animate Dead, which is the most common source of skeletons and zombies, require an evil action in it's casting. Maybe a material component would be an eye ripped from a still-living humanoid, put into the eye sockets of the undead-to be. Obtaining such a component will usually involve evil actions, and while the spell itself isn't an evil action, it still requires evil actions to be cast.
That way, it would be easy to also put in another spell should someone wish that doesn't have that component (that has another component instead) and as such isn't evil.
I think the problem with that is that such details is a bit much for the corebook, it says it is evil in core not more details needed the rest is up to your imagination, maybe a pathfinder supplement that explores further on it could be made, but several 3.5 supplements already exist.
Book of vile Darkness had this fancy sticker on it, 'For Mature Audiences Only'.
Book of vile Darkness had this fancy sticker on it, 'For Mature Audiences Only'.And under it was a little disclaimer stating "No actual maturity included."
good point, the book of vile darkness wasn't for everyone though, I largely did not appreciate it much. People will disagree on alignment no matter what, the corebook offers a baseline for alignment.
If you want you can give a few more spells the [evil] tag or take it away from a few spells, it gives a pretty decent base to work from though.
I though alignment descriptions in PF weren't absolutes. If they are, there can be no orc druids ever, and that kind of sucks. And no kobold bards (hehe nwn). Don't have the bestiary here, but I surely hope they don't have entries for any PC classes or we'd be in big trouble when it comes to setting the alignment of our characters.
Doom doom DOOM! Doomy doom doom!
*Gets mauled by a vicious bread pudding.*
Frankly, I wish that Pathfinder had jettisoned the alignment concept entirely. You can have concepts of good and evil or law and chaos without the unnecessarily restrictive and often silly structure of an alignment system. Maybe in 2nd Edition...
It's on kind of a weird see-saw where it either matters entirely too much or it doesn't matter at all. A revamp would be very nice, maybe with secondary disclaimers stating "Alignment is not an absolute, bad guys can be good guys, policemen can be thieves, left is right and down is up." Some people's heads may explode, but nothing of value would be lost.
I did not say skeletons are always neutral evil, I said you can not choose to create skeletons from a different alignment. There might be extraordinary circumstances that create them with other alignments, but normally it will just be an evil skeleton.
But shouldn't this be as simple as "Hey! DM! My wizard just leveled and is supposed to get new spells. I have access to a scroll of Animate Dead. Can my character spend time studying how the spell works and then make a spellcraft check to see if he can redesign the spell to (use positive energy/create neutral/good undead)?"
Yes, house rule, I know. But I remember 3E player's handbook or dm's guide having a section on spells where talked about personalising spells (having a "fireball" that is blue and does cold damage). I haven't looked through all of the PF cure rules to see if they have that section still in there ( I haven't been playing spellcasters or running a game so I had no need to know about magic), but if it is, isn't changing the spell descriptor from [evil] to [good] and changing the effects of the spell a valid way of personalising it?
I would rather have seen negative energy was evil energy period, ofcourse that doesn't mix well with fiends I suppose, but negative energy seems to be a trademark of evil if not infact evil itself.
I would rather have seen negative energy was evil energy period, ofcourse that doesn't mix well with fiends I suppose, but negative energy seems to be a trademark of evil if not infact evil itself.I did not say skeletons are always neutral evil, I said you can not choose to create skeletons from a different alignment. There might be extraordinary circumstances that create them with other alignments, but normally it will just be an evil skeleton.
But shouldn't this be as simple as "Hey! DM! My wizard just leveled and is supposed to get new spells. I have access to a scroll of Animate Dead. Can my character spend time studying how the spell works and then make a spellcraft check to see if he can redesign the spell to (use positive energy/create neutral/good undead)?"
Yes, house rule, I know. But I remember 3E player's handbook or dm's guide having a section on spells where talked about personalising spells (having a "fireball" that is blue and does cold damage). I haven't looked through all of the PF cure rules to see if they have that section still in there ( I haven't been playing spellcasters or running a game so I had no need to know about magic), but if it is, isn't changing the spell descriptor from [evil] to [good] and changing the effects of the spell a valid way of personalising it?
Well it's kind of hard to view life giving energy as evil and death giving energy as good. It's kind of a weird cross cultural thing, like the walking dead, dragons and divine fire.
Humans and living creatures do cause a lot of destruction. Maybe negative energy could be a pacifying energy and positive could be an activating energy?
Well it's kind of hard to view life giving energy as evil and death giving energy as good. It's kind of a weird cross cultural thing, like the walking dead, dragons and divine fire.
Humans and living creatures do cause a lot of destruction. Maybe negative energy could be a pacifying energy and positive could be an activating energy?
That isn't hard at all, it all depends on the setting, in deity and demigods there was an interesting concept about a dual religious setting.
Two twin gods basically one a being of light and it's twin a being of darkness. I have been playing so many weird pantheistic systems in my campaigns and as a player I find myself liking the simplicity.
yea.. I never liked the Law vs Chaos theme much, I dont see my players running hot for it either.
sounds like a mummy to me
|
Frankly, I wish that Pathfinder had jettisoned the alignment concept entirely. You can have concepts of good and evil or law and chaos without the unnecessarily restrictive and often silly structure of an alignment system. Maybe in 2nd Edition...It's on kind of a weird see-saw where it either matters entirely too much or it doesn't matter at all. A revamp would be very nice, maybe with secondary disclaimers stating "Alignment is not an absolute, bad guys can be good guys, policemen can be thieves, left is right and down is up." Some people's heads may explode, but nothing of value would be lost.
I think the entire alignment system could be exorcised with some minimal changes. I just think that it does more to handicap roleplaying than it does to help it. And you run into silliness like this, where creating mindless undead is an evil act, but enslaving an elemental spirit to create a construct is not.
The alignment system runs a bit deeper than that I think you will have to make significant changes really.
|
I mean, at its heart I think this all boils down to if they ever do a Pathfinder 2.0 (unlikely, a lot of the reason pathfinder exists is to keep the d20 open source around), they should eliminate alignment, period. 4th edition did get that right. There skeletons are too dumb to be evil, players won't tell you "you can't do that, that's not in your alignment"... it really opens the doors for roleplaying and making moral decisions as you see fit. But right now far too many spells are tied to alignment to just "yank" it from the game (or not, an alignmentless game could work... it eliminates a few staples like Holy, but not so many that they can't be worked around).
Everyone always tries to play LN/N/CN/CG anyway; I've heard arguments for all of those being the "alignment you can do what you want; except X insignificant thing". By the writeup all of those are wrong, and true neutral doesn't exist in intelligent beings... but I digress.
sounds like a mummy to meThe Egyptian variant is. But there are several instances of stories/folklore from pagan Europe that the dead actually do live in their burial mounds, and that is why people shouldn't try stealing from burial mounds. Also a reason not to mess with ancient families since their family burial mounds are generally large and a few feet away, and the ancestors protect their descendants.
Tolkien's Barrow Wights were a corrupt form of this.
I don't think it will do well for undead to be anything else than neutral really, but a LN tomb guardian would be acceptable, assuming they were willing recipients of the spell.
The book claims that left to their own devices, their preferred hobby is to kill any living things they come across. You've dismissed that with a hand.
It has the [evil] descriptor, the creatures it creatures are alignment: Neutral Evil. Again you just say "why are they Neutral Evil". Well, they're listed that way; see above as to why one could theorize this, but the bottom line is by the book, they are Neutral Evil.
We can even go so far to point out that evil in the game is generally based on "society norms"; so slaughtering lots of people or working to try to make yourself a leader via lots of bribing is considered "evil". So the society norm thing doesn't just apply to making corpses do your bidding instead of giving them proper burials; society's norm defines "alignments". Yes, this makes alignment a bit silly, but it works.
You're thinking of zombies. Skeletons are just automatons, and the only evil thing about them in their description is their "evil" cunning ability to use weapons and armor (which again recalls carrying things in an evil way).
I've offered a reason that skeletons could be labeled evil without being an anathema to life: they're usually made by jerks, who tend to give skeletons evil instructions. In 3.5 terms, that's "usually neutral evil".
Being created by an evil spell doesn't automatically make you evil; flesh golems are neutral, despite explicitly being created by an evil spell and explicitly requiring the enslavement of an elemental spirit.
The point is that the rules as written support skeletons-as-mindless-automatons-no-more-capable-of-evil-than-a-sword as well as the interpretation you're pushing as THE RULES AS HANDED DOWN TO US BY GOD.
Ignoring the idea of "enslaving" cattle and horses...I think the "evil cunning" is not simply using armor and weapons..and more that they act menacingly with them. It says evil cunning..not just cunning. I don't need the rules to explicitly state otherwise. Most of us read that in the way it was intended...they use whatever weapons they can get in the most malicious way possible; where a golem wont even bother with the weapon. Perhaps they should expend the money on ink, for a footnote just for you to clarify. And again..the book lists them as neutral evil..anything other is at heart a house rule, and not worth spending pages about. And again..if they were simple automatons..they would be listed as undead. Sometimes the dividing like between undead and constructs is mostly alignment.
Flesh golems are an unusual exception to the rule..I can only think they couldn't come up with a spell that would fit better. The simple "fluff" answer is that the elemental spirit overides the necromantic power, when it comes to powering the goelm.
I'd say it's pretty easy to justify.
Animate Dead: This spell is inherently evil, because it creates evil undead, permanently adding Negative Energy to the world.
Skeletons and Zombies: These monsters are inherently evil because the rules say so. They are mindless in the 'immune to mind-affecting spells and effects' and 'can't be reasoned with' ways, but despite having no intellect, will actively seek out and destroy life unless commanded not to.
Other Negative energy: Not inherently evil, perhaps because the spells only harness the destructive potential of negative energy, without harnessing negative energy in a way that permanently creates willfully evil undead permanently. As such, a spell like Ennervation is not inherently evil. However, it, like any spell, can be used for evil, and if used to kill something so it returns as an evil undead, then that *would* be inherently evil.
Creation of a golem: While enslaving an elemental spirit is not a good act, the most common elemental spirits are low-int and not 'life' as civilization knows it. The golem itself is not evil, although it could go berserk. Therefore, the creation of a golem is not inherently evil, although it is a far cry from good. It is a morally questionable act, dependent on what the elemental spirit itself believes about being enslaved, and what the civilization's moral code says about slavery in general. Is 'enslaving' an elemental spirit to power a golem more or less evil than 'enslaving' cattle to plow a field? Are the elemental spirits Int 4-10, like the various earth elementals? Or lower int? All told... lots of nebulous possibilities here.
The simple answer is 'Skeletons, Zombies, and Animate Dead are evil, because the rules say so' and 'Golem creation, with the exception of flesh golems, is not evil, because the rules say so'. That's RAW. And for something that likely is a very minor portion of any given campaign, that's good enough.
Now, if you've got a game that centers around constructs (perhaps a necromantic steampunk world where animated dead and consrtucts are used regularly as day-to-day technology), then the issues of morality surrounding these creatures could become major facets of the game, and you'd need to clarify what is evil, what is good, what is enslavement, what is bargains, etc. In this case, doing more than just hand-waving 'all undead are evil' makes sense.
Or maybe you're in a game like the OP (holy crap getting back on topic), and you have someone who wants to dabble in Necromancy but isn't a jerk wanting to kill mindlessly. In this case, talk to the DM, find out if he's ok with Neutral mindless undead, getting away from the 'Always Neutral Evil'. If so, I'd say that both the skellies and spell are no longer 'inherently evil' and become 'circumstantially evil' just like every other spell. It's certainly reasonable.
I think RAW are clear - inconsistent without some DM massaging to make things make sense, but clear. That said, there's a LOT of room for a DM to make lots of interesting choices with these areas, especially if necromancy or constructs are going to be key components of the game, rather than a one-off monster of the week.
I'd say it's pretty easy to justify.
Animate Dead: This spell is inherently evil, because it creates evil undead, permanently adding Negative Energy to the world.
Skeletons and Zombies: These monsters are inherently evil because the rules say so. They are mindless in the 'immune to mind-affecting spells and effects' and 'can't be reasoned with' ways, but despite having no intellect, will actively seek out and destroy life unless commanded not to.
Other Negative energy: Not inherently evil, perhaps because the spells only harness the destructive potential of negative energy, without harnessing negative energy in a way that permanently creates willfully evil undead permanently. As such, a spell like Ennervation is not inherently evil. However, it, like any spell, can be used for evil, and if used to kill something so it returns as an evil undead, then that *would* be inherently evil.
Creation of a golem: While enslaving an elemental spirit is not a good act, the most common elemental spirits are low-int and not 'life' as civilization knows it. The golem itself is not evil, although it could go berserk. Therefore, the creation of a golem is not inherently evil, although it is a far cry from good. It is a morally questionable act, dependent on what the elemental spirit itself believes about being enslaved, and what the civilization's moral code says about slavery in general. Is 'enslaving' an elemental spirit to power a golem more or less evil than 'enslaving' cattle to plow a field? Are the elemental spirits Int 4-10, like the various earth elementals? Or lower int? All told... lots of nebulous possibilities here.
The simple answer is 'Skeletons, Zombies, and Animate Dead are evil, because the rules say so' and 'Golem creation, with the exception of flesh golems, is not evil, because the rules say so'. That's RAW. And for something that likely is a very minor portion of any given campaign, that's good enough.
If I recall, traditionally the "elemental spirit" that animated a golem in legend (and in early versions of the game) were nonintelligent..or about as intelligent as your everyday golem.
Situation:Good cleric in a part of "mostly" good characters. The mostly-neutral Wizard wants to create a few undead as personal servants and cannon-fodder. If the cleric’s deity doesn't mention undead in its portfolio could that cleric tolerate these little batches of negative energy from a role-playing standpoint?
Does anyone have experience playing in this kind of situation?
I tend to view the cultural side of things, rather than the religious or alignment angles. Most cultures have taboos and strictures regarding the dead. Many modern countries have established laws concerning the proper handling of the dead: only certified professionals can deal with human remains; graverobbing is a crime; mutilation or other forms of abuse to a corpse may carry criminal penalties. Depending on the culture, the response may be different. Most cultures would view the desecration of their dead as wrong. However, some might be pragmatic enough to look the other way when dealing with, say, orc skeletons or goblin zombies. (They say the only good goblin is a dead goblin, and they don't get much deader than this...) Countries like Nex and Geb will be a lot more open concerning undead and their use, even individual citizens that are good aligned might be so inured to their presence as to not take any offense.
So, long story short, I'd say it greatly depends on the individual cleric's function in society. As an adventuring cleric, he might be more flexible when it comes to these things than a parish priest would be. ("Okay, but limit them to around a half dozen, and when we go into town, they stay hidden somewhere downwind.")