Necromantic-powered zombies do not have a real-world corollary, and thus comparing them to animal instinctual behavior is inherently flawed. It's like comparing how fireballs work to how backdrafts work. To someone watching from outside with no knowledge of magic or physics, the end result (a big ball of fire) might look identical, but the why and how of what they're doing are fundamentally different.A hungry lion will stop once its needs have been satiated. A mindless undead will not stop until it is destroyed. It will hunt out every last speck of life and then keep looking for more to destroy. It is programmed for Evil.It's still following a base instinct as opposed to making a conscious choice. It's dangerous and needs to be kept on a tight leash, but it can still be used for good ends and kept from doing evil if supervised. A Necromancer who just lets zombies run around and eat random people would be evil, for the same reason that someone who runs around nuking random peasent cottages with fireballs is evil. But a Necromancer who animates zombies, keeps them from harming innocents, and uses them to save and protect people, how is that evil?
The flipside of your argument is since it's all fantasy, why does undead have to have a moral implication? I understand your position as official pf guy, but this isn't a rules discussion. Other than pathfinder specific fluff, i.e. you say the necromantic energy causes undead to be evil, why should it be inherently so?
|
A lion might stop once its appetite is sated, this is true. A sphere of annihilation does not and it is not considered evil.
A sphere of annihilation does not seek out life.
A sphere of annihilation is static, resting in some spot as if it were a normal hole.
I find it amusing that this is a discussion between people who all think undead should be Neutral. :)
In 45 years (hopefully not that soon) when we do Pathfinder 2nd Edition, this is something I'd like to revisit and perhaps change.
SWEEEET!
It's official, gang, and you heard it here first!
Pathfinder 2nd Edition is in the works and they've set the date!
When can we start the beta?
|
|
They're not exactly the same as animals, but they are similar in many ways, and it's those similarities that I'm pointing out. Both have limited intelligence and follow instinctual behaviors. If anything, the animal, being more intelligent than the zombie and having some limited capacity for inteligent choice, should be more responsible for its actions, not less. The zombie is just a robot following a very basic program.
I think it has more to do with alignment being what you're inclined to do and why. Animals kill because they have to eat. Undead kill because they want to.
When can we start the beta?
Beta's already over. They're in Alpha testing.
Flesh golems are not evil because they aren't animated by negative energy, but rather by an infused elemental (which is why they sometimes go berserk). Elementals are neutral - while they can be very destructive, they do not seek out life to destroy it, which mindless undead do.
|
Considering that both zombies and flesh golems are mindless automatons animated by magic, what is the distinction between the two that makes one evil and the other not?
Well for starters what powers them would be one. In occult lore the animation or divination derived from spirits were unnatural (re:evil). In the traditional vodou controlling a dead person as a slave was considered an evil act and they had precautions against potential zombification. Also on a metaphysical note (not that anyone cares), reanimating the dead actually is supposed to awaken and reanimate a fragmentary animus within the corpse. While in occult lore Golems are animated by elemental (possibly ancient proto demons) spirits.
And IMO creating a flesh Golem should be an evil act. I am just basing it on motivation and the source material. In the original Frankenstein, when Dr. Frankenstein created Adam he was doing it for scientific pursuits, to see if he could beat death. Yeah he robbed graves for the parts, but that practice was already in place for some time and was commonly used to gather materials for scientific and medical research.
Now on the other hand when 14th level Al-hrazan of the Weeping Eye creates a Flesh Golem it’s probably going to be used as his bodyguard or he is going to send it out to kill some PCs or murder innocents. And golems all suffer the Frankenstein dilemma - at least those with the potential to go berserk and kill innocents. With the nature of animated dead just killing anything in their "down time" I would say that knowingly creating something like that is an evil act.
The problem here is the idea that a mindless automaton can have an alignment. It shouldn't. It is mindless, and thus completely incapable of moral judgment. As far as being animated to do violent deeds, well so what? Animated objects, golems, heck, even fireballs, are used to violent ends and that doesn't make them evil. Violence is not inherently evil. A zombie may hunger and hunt, but then, so do animals, and animals, even the most violent ones, are neutral.I actually agree. I fought to give skeletons and zombies an Intelligence of 3 OR to make them true neutral, but for many reasons (most of which rhyme with "compatibility with 3.5") that wasn't really an option. So I added the bit of flavor text to both that talks about how while they're mindless, their necromantic energy causes them to be evil. It's obviously not a perfect solution (if it were, this thread wouldn't exist), but I do think that it justifies their alignment and mindless state enough to make it make a little bit of sense while maintaining compatibility with 3.5.
In 45 years (hopefully not that soon) when we do Pathfinder 2nd Edition, this is something I'd like to revisit and perhaps change.
Oh, good. At least there was some discussion to this point, and the whole "wanders around and randomly kills living things when bored" was added to help justify 3.5's Evil alignment addition (in 3.0, the spell was Evil, but the creatures were not). At least I understand why you guys did that now. I'm not thrilled with it, because it doesn't make sense with how alignment functions in the game (wherein alignment is based in large part on conscious decision making, which is why animals and automatons are neutral), but at least it's a step towards justification. Thanks for the insight.
|
|
Personally, in my games the caster decides at the time of creation if the mindless undead is Good, Neutral, or Evil. Evil is as the rules say, seek and destroy. Neutral is the construct mode, act on orders until ordered otherwise. And Good mindless undead will actually seek out life and tend to it. (The robot in Castle in the Sky would be a good example.) I'd probably allow the option of casting Gentle Repose as part of the ritual to prevent decay and sending the wrong signal.
Edit: I'd probably allow the same with construct creation as well.
Undead are created by infusing corpses with energy from the Negative Energy Plane. The Negative Energy is the source of entropy and destruction. It is anti-life. There is no benign or creative use for anti-life. Unlike elemental fire, which can be used to harm or help, negative energy is universally destructive toward living things. It warps life, attacks life. Every act of "creation" with negative energy is just a mockery of true creation, an ugly, distorted parody of life. It is inherently more hateful and destructive than racism, murder, genocide, torture because it wants to destroy life simply because it exists, no matter that life's shape, form, needs, intent, or purpose.
That's evil.
|
Huh.
Quoting from "The Great Beyond":
Known simply as the Void, the Negative Energy Plane empowers undead just
as positive energy is the driving force behind all living things, but contrary to some religious dogma, neither it nor its destructive energies are evil. As dangerous and antithetical to life as they might be, they simply exist as an opposite to the creative potential of the positive, divorced from any notion of morality.
So either Sean is talking about generic D&D NEP, or Todd Stewart is off the rockers, or somebody doesn't read his own product line :)
Or maybe SKR is the religious dogma Shemeska is referencing to. :)))
Undead are created by infusing corpses with energy from the Negative Energy Plane. The Negative Energy is the source of entropy and destruction. It is anti-life. There is no benign or creative use for anti-life. Unlike elemental fire, which can be used to harm or help, negative energy is universally destructive toward living things. It warps life, attacks life. Every act of "creation" with negative energy is just a mockery of true creation, an ugly, distorted parody of life. It is inherently more hateful and destructive than racism, murder, genocide, torture because it wants to destroy life simply because it exists, no matter that life's shape, form, needs, intent, or purpose.
That's evil.
See! I KNEW kender were evil!
|
|
It is anti-life. There is no benign or creative use for anti-life.
Killing disease, perhaps? Oh, that's right, 'anti-life' is used to *create life,* so long as that life is microscopic. (In 1st edition, Mummies were animated by *positive* energy, explaining their creation of life through disease, which most undead couldn't do, since it's life-draining touch would render the outer surface of it's body sterile and lifeless and incapable of transmitting disease! I may not agree with everything Gary Gygax wrote, but he at least was consistent in his portrayals of positive life-energy and negative death-energy, and didn't write up any undead with the power to create life...)
The 3.5 'update' that turned mindless creatures animated by neutral energy into 'always evil,' despite explicitly having rules to bump celestial and fiendish creatures to Int 3 because, at Int 2, they weren't eligible to be good or evil, was just ass-backwards.
Actually, I'm even *more* annoyed by the whole 'mindless' thing than I am by the evil undead thing. Nonabilities are just poor design, IMO, and cause problems with creatures with nonabilities in Constitution (such as undead, as mocked soundly in Order in the Playground), and vermin with nonabilities in Intelligence, despite being able to be trained, in-game, by Drow, Duergar, etc and summoned and commended to perform tasks by Druids using Summon Nature's Ally or Clerics using Giant Insect, despite being functionally unable to understand those commands, and utterly immune to mind-affecting effects, except, of course, for when they conveniently aren't...
Skeletons and Zombies are either intelligent and evil (even if it's only Intelligence 3) *or* mindless coatracks, vastly *less* evil than Golems, who actually have specific rules about how they enslave extraplanar spirits and go on berserk killing sprees, unlike core skeletons and zombies, that don't enslave spirits and don't go on berserk killing sprees. (Even in Pathfinder, while zombies are said to mill around and seek out living creatures to destroy, *skeletons* do not have this bit of text, and apparently remain about as capable of volition and malevolence as any other Int 0 item, like a coat-racks or a plunger.)
I'm fine with a house-rule that negative energy is always evil, and, therefore, positive energy is always good, and, therefore, evil Clerics can never cast healing spells, because they would be calling upon the power of goodness, but it's more work than I want to deal with, adding a series of healing spells accessible to evil Clerics, who would be as incapable of channeling positive energy as good Clerics are incapable of channeling negative energy (and, hey, check out those Channel Energy rules, that's true!).
If someone wants to develop those rules, cool, but they don't exist as of yet, just some half-arsed declaration that mindless things animated by an uncaring unaligned force is somehow capable of plotting evil plots and scheming evil schemes. When the rules are actually *complete* (and not explicitly admitted to have been added to 3.5 solely so that Paladins could smite skeletons and zombies!), they might make for an interesting setting.
Instead I'll use the ruling that's worked since 1st edition. Negative energy (and positive energy) is neutral. Skeletons and Zombies are incapable of malice aforethought. Tacky, yes, but a shaman communing with the spirits of the tribes ancestors isn't evil just because modern religion finds the concept of thinking about one's ancestors after they've died to be 'savage' and 'primitive.'
You aren't communing with spirits though. You aren't summoning the spirits of the righteous dead from the heavens.
You're exhuming the bodies of others who were rightfully buried, shoving the energy of death into them, and making them dance as your puppets. Worst of all, should those strings be cut, they will instictively find the living and kill them (power of death, remember?)
That's why it's evil.
Negative energy as it stands alone isn't evil. Using negative energy to kill someone else CAN be evil, depending on who's being killed. But a negative energy golem - which is indeed what undead basically are - is evil, because it's powered by "Not-Living" and indeed takes it's cues from "Not-Living" to find the living and "not" them. That's why the undead themselves can be mindless and evil - they're very existence is to murder all living things.
|
|
You're exhuming the bodies of others who were rightfully buried, shoving the energy of death into them, and making them dance as your puppets.
That's a freakishly unpopular use of the spell. Most PCs use the spell to animate fallen monsters (ideally hydras, dragons and / or called outsiders) and don't exhume anything.
Human, demihuman and humanoid corpses are woefully inefficient, especially at the 5th to 7th level ranges in which one would gain access to the animate dead spell.
You *could* choose to descrate a human(ish) graveyard to make some luggage-carriers or something, but it would be a terrible mechanical choice, in addition to being disrespectful and kinda stupid (since it pretty much guarantees that NPCs will, at some point, attack you for digging up their grandma).
In third-party situations where there is a 1st level spell to create a single skeleton (or a class feature, like the necromancer class feature in Unearthed Arcana), it's almost equal to having an animal companion or Eidolon, but by 3rd level, long before one can even animate dead, a human skeleton or zombie is quickly turning into a trap-finder or speed-bump.
Sure, I totally agree that a necromancer who sneaks into town and digs up bodies from the local graveyard to animate is evil (and disrespectful and socially maladjusted and tacky), but, more importantly, he's an idiot who deserves what he gets.
I think the real problem is underneath the details people are picking on in SKR's post. If you only think of evil in terms of morality, especially in the sense of free agency, then creating undead = evil makes no sense. But if you add to that an inherent, and even metaphysical understanding of evil in addition to the bare moral sense, then you've got it. Life is good, unlife is evil. There are just some parts of traditional D&D cosmology that are incoherent and need work. Always has, and perhaps, always will.
|
|
I think the real problem is underneath the details people are picking on in SKR's post. If you only think of evil in terms of morality, especially in the sense of free agency, then creating undead = evil makes no sense. But if you add to that an inherent, and even metaphysical understanding of evil in addition to the bare moral sense, then you've got it. Life is good, unlife is evil. There are just some parts of traditional D&D cosmology that are incoherent and need work. Always has, and perhaps, always will.
What I'm trying to point out is that Negative Energy = Evil idea contradicts what's written in The Great Beyond. And I would really enjoy to know what's the official story on this, because authors contradicting each other is bad, wrong, and plain evil.
|
|
If I'm not mistaken wasn't both the Xag-ya and Xeg-yi both destructive creatures from the positive and negative planes?
I actually have to agree <gasp> with Cirno on this one. I think in their natural states both the positive and negative planes (and energy) should be unaligned. Once they interact with life they can assign either a good or evil tag. I could even see a positive energy creatures presence causing major damage and possible be evil - in a planetary detonation sort of way.
I guess the way would to think of it as a form of radiation, on their own they are unaligned but once they get in contact with living or dead things everything goes to hell - one causes corpses to rise while the other makes things explode in white powerful lights (still dead). I think that line of thinking is closer to 1st ed + my take.
Positive or negative energy alone isn't good or evil, that's true.
A golem made of dead things, fueled by negative energy and death power?
Um. It might be a bit difficult to argue how that's a good thing.
Creative Director
|
Considering that both zombies and flesh golems are mindless automatons animated by magic, what is the distinction between the two that makes one evil and the other not?
The fact that the golem is created by the Craft Construct feat and an elemental spirit animates it into a construct is what makes it different from a zombie that's animated by evil necromancy effects.
And a zombie isn't "just a robot." It's more like a robot that's possessed by an evil spirit or a demonic spirit.
|
Creative Director
|
In 45 years (hopefully not that soon) when we do Pathfinder 2nd Edition, this is something I'd like to revisit and perhaps change.SWEEEET!
It's official, gang, and you heard it here first!
Pathfinder 2nd Edition is in the works and they've set the date!
When can we start the beta?
Note: I did not promise that those 45 years would be CONSECUTIVE years.
Nor did I promise that they would be Earth years.
I think the real problem is underneath the details people are picking on in SKR's post. If you only think of evil in terms of morality, especially in the sense of free agency, then creating undead = evil makes no sense. But if you add to that an inherent, and even metaphysical understanding of evil in addition to the bare moral sense, then you've got it. Life is good, unlife is evil. There are just some parts of traditional D&D cosmology that are incoherent and need work. Always has, and perhaps, always will.What I'm trying to point out is that Negative Energy = Evil idea contradicts what's written in The Great Beyond. And I would really enjoy to know what's the official story on this, because authors contradicting each other is bad, wrong, and plain evil.
Yep, that's a problem. I favor the Todd-Stewart-is-off-his-rocker explanation, but I'm interested in whatever eventually comes out.
Do you have room for it being Chaotic Neutral? ;PBTW, as the person appointed by me to represent all Polish people, I wish you'd seen the look on my daughter's face when the game store had her Crimson Throne dice in last week. Bee-yoo-tee-ful.
In 45 years (hopefully not that soon) when we do Pathfinder 2nd Edition, this is something I'd like to revisit and perhaps change.SWEEEET!
It's official, gang, and you heard it here first!
Pathfinder 2nd Edition is in the works and they've set the date!
When can we start the beta?
Note: I did not promise that those 45 years would be CONSECUTIVE years.
Nor did I promise that they would be Earth years.
Bah! That's just rules-lawyerish shenanigans. Next you'll probably tell me my character can get +2 AC for swinging defensively at empty air.
So, when's the formal beta announcement? I bet it's at PaizoCon. Yep, mmmm-hmmm, I bet that's it.
Well... tecnically you are desecrating/distubing people's remains, which is vieved as an evil act by most cultures.
I actually agree. I fought to give skeletons and zombies an Intelligence of 3 OR to make them true neutral, but for many reasons (most of which rhyme with "compatibility with 3.5") that wasn't really an option. So I added the bit of flavor text to both that talks about how while they're mindless, their necromantic energy causes them to be evil. It's obviously not a perfect solution (if it were, this thread wouldn't exist), but I do think that it justifies their alignment and mindless state enough to make it make a little bit of sense while maintaining compatibility with 3.5.In 45 years (hopefully not that soon) when we do Pathfinder 2nd Edition, this is something I'd like to revisit and perhaps change.
And this is why my earlier answer differed from yours, the change to Zombie and Skeleton alignment in 3.x (compared to 3e and 2e, and possibly 1e) always struck me as being alien to the actual flavor text and nature of what was happening, and certainly a departure to 3e and the earlier fluff I was familiar with.
Now it's certainly possible to rationalize why the spell might be evil even if the negative energy isn't (ie there's a reason that negative energy can't be used normally to create life, much to the lament and sorrow of the scaeduinar who seem to even themselves view undead as an abomination as much or more than positive energy based life). The mixing of negative energy in that capacity to a formerly living being, even if its soul is no longer in any way involved, might upset some fundamental rule set down in prehistory, the violation of which imparts some real, if subtle perhaps, objective evil to the action. And then that's the baseline, and usually those raising armies of skeletons typically have evil intent behind their actions anyways.
But it's a shame to lose the chance at white necromancy entirely. Would be nice to have ways around that.
And at the risk of having him nailed by the errata gun, I already created a non-evil (CN) lich (given a rather long history of non-evil or even good liches/archliches/baelnorn in D&D lore, usually carrying with them some rather poignant origin stories and reasons for being different from the standard evil lich).
And as an addendum, please let me write more about the Void, the sceaduinar, and negative energy. More detail is needed to remove any confusion of why negative energy itself is neutral/divorced from alignment, but why its use in certain ways or contexts can be very much evil on an objective level.
;)
And I'm never off my rocker. I'm just eccentric. Or misunderstood. Or Evil. One of those I figure. And I try to memorize planar lore for Golarion (and this is one of those conflicts between generic PF rules and where we should rationalize as absolutely best as possible any conflict between them and flavor that's Golarion specific out there, and having given it some though, there's nothing here on either side that needs to be retconned. Gentlemen I propose that we discuss this over alcohol at GenCon - unless I get told that I actually am off my rocker in public, and Sean or James kicks me and laugh, at which point I'm going to mope and plot intricate revenge, or something like that).
|
|
In Arcanis at least the alignment descriptor of the spell is easy to justify. Animating someone's dead corpse in that setting permanently bars them from any form resurection. Making them into incorporeal undead puts them permanently out of the reincarnation pool.
A fine example of a setting that bothered to come up with a reason for the otherwise arbitary change from 3.0 to 3.5.
Another example would be for the animation process to actually contact the soul of the departed, disrupting their eternal reward (or eternal torment). Why would the gods (good or evil) allow the souls under their jurisdiction to suffer (or be partially absolved from duly-mandated suffering) such a fate? Perhaps they can't stop it, perhaps necromancy is reviled for that very reason, because it's an offense against the gods themselves.
And so the gods, for whatever reason, perhaps as a result of some pact they were tricked or strong-armed into honoring at the dawn of time, cannot actively prevent a necromancy spell or effect from snatching souls away from their care (or abuse), and so try to 'get around the pact' by giving their clerics the ability to destroy and damage undead creatures (or enslave and bind them, in an attempt to 'poach' the souls of other dieties, right out from under them).
Random example of how such a situation, where the gods are powerless to stop necromancers from messing with their petitioners;
Many mythic traditions have a concept of a time before death, when mankind (or the various mortal races, even animals) were ageless and free from disease or death, until something went terribly wrong. Maybe, in this 'necromancy = soul theft' paradigm, at this time, all life would have been destroyed, forever, as the power of death / oblivion itself grew mighty enough to consume everything, perhaps even the gods themselves, and they were forced to barter with the endless nothing, and swear not to *stop* it's necromantic practitioners from performing their fell rights, in order to stall the end of all things. They convinced it that if it killed *everything,* it would never get to kill again, and would be eternally hungry, having tasted blood, but denied itself the chance to ever taste it again. By allowing life to continue, an endless stream of death would result, forever slaking it's new appetite for souls. The herald of the apocalypse was, perversely, convinced to step away from it's final victory, just to 'continue the game.' But this endless hunger required that it's agents continue to prosper, to feed it with their murders and sacrifices and necromantic rites. The gods would not be permitted to snatch away every single soul and keep it from the reaper, and even those that escaped the world and made it to the celestial (or infernal) realms could still be stolen back, with the proper blasphemous rites.
The gods of good themselves endure this, while charging their clergy to destroy undead on sight, and give them the power to do so, through the channeling of positive energy, or various clerical or druidic spells that have increased or special effects versus undead (such as magic stone, flame blade, wall of fire, searing light, etc.).
The evil gods take it one step further, allowing their clergy to animate dead themselves, short-sightedly flirting with oblivion itself to snatch souls away from their good-aligned rivals, in an attempt to shatter and sully them so much in this torturous existence that they grow mad and vicious, and, when their undead form is finally destroyed, the once pure and virtuous soul is now ripe for the harvesting by their infernal masters. Some may be lost to oblivion in the process, but a prize stolen from the gods of good is it's own reward, even if you don't get to keep it...
Such a setting would have a valid reason why necromancy is evil, even nihistic, in nature, why the gods of evil would encourage it, despite it's blasphemous nature, and why the gods of good, life and nature would give clerics so many different tools with which to combat it.
Took me about 15 minutes to come up with, and I'm not paid to think up this stuff.
|
Creative Director
|
There are more than enough spells in the necromancy school that aren't evil. You can do a "white necromancer" if you want. It's just that a "white necromancer" isn't going to be an undead master.
And as for official Golarion non-evil liches... I guess they might exist but they're not going to be common and they run a VERY good chance of being retconed or written out of history if they're not something that we're specifically building for a specific reason.
Or, since I don't have time to approve every single word that sees print, they could sneak in through the back door. ;-) Which generally frustrates and annoys me when I DO find out about them... and the more things that writers sneak into the setting that go against the established norm without me knowing, the more riled up I get...
Just sayin! (narrows eyes... tumbleweed rolls by... tense music wells up from the surrounding dunes..)
|
|
More random thoughts about undead paradigms;
*****************************************************
A problem that rears it’s ugly head when making arbitrary changes is that they trickle-down. If mindless undead seek out and destroy life, the question becomes, if they are mindless, how do they determine what is alive versus what is unliving? We know from the real world that an opossum can ‘feign dead’ with sufficient skill to fool a predator, which, in D&D terms, would have an Intelligence score of 2. An undead wouldn’t even have the *option* of figuring out that is a deception, meaning that a possum would be *guaranteed* to fool the undead. Indeed, a human child throwing a blanket over her head would likely also become utterly invisible to a rampaging horde of skeletons or zombies, since they have no capacity to comprehend that she’s still there, under the blanket. It’s not like they have infravision, or lifesight, or some other mystical property to detect living beings or life-forces, at least, not in this game.
A necromancer commanding those undead could *order* them to kill the child under the blanket, but otherwise, they’d just wander around, killing anything that *did* fit their limited comprehension of ‘living thing.’ Does this destruction of life extend to plant-life? Will a horde of skeletons ‘at liberty’ wander through the forest, chopping down trees, in an attempt to destroy all life, or do they only recognize animal life as ‘life?’ Do insects count? Will a batch of skeletons trapped in a crypt spend eternity chasing centipedes with murderous intent, or is it only warm-blooded prey? Maybe it’s only sentients they prey upon, hateful reminders of their living forms, and yet, how would that apply to undead fashioned from animals or monsters? Do they only hate living creatures of their own type? Is there some sort of order of priority, starting with creatures of their own type, and then other animals, and then bugs, and then plants? What does a creature fundementally incapable of hating anything hate most? How many spectres can occupy same square, if they are all incorporeal? What's with the angels and pins, anyway?
[And, I gotta admit, the visual of a little girl hiding under a blanket shivering while skeletons tear through her cottage and kill her parents, only to be found later by adventurers, still hiding under her blankie, is kinda awesome...]
**************************************************
Should a negative energy plane even exist, or the concept of ‘negative energy?’ What if ‘negative energy’ is like cold, not a thing unto itself, but the absence of heat, or, in this case, the absence of positive energy?
In this sort of paradigm, the undead wouldn’t generate negative energy (any more than an ice cube 'generates cold'), it would absorb positive energy from those it ‘energy drains,’ to fuel its own existence (since, unlike a living thing, it cannot generate positive energy within itself to restore hit point damage). The undead with life-absorbing qualities (shadows, wights, vampires, etc.) would drain positive energy from their prey in this manner, instead of ‘inflicting negative energy damage’ and would damage *each other* in this same manner, tearing each other apart to steal the dregs of stolen positive energy within their fellow undead, when they are starved for life-force. Ghouls and vampires would take positive energy from other living creatures in the same way that humans and grizzly bears and antelope do, by consuming other living creatures, and drawing the positive energy from those formerly living entities. (Unlike humans and grizzly bears and antelope, the ghoul or vampire doesn’t also gain any physical nutrition from this feeding process, and, in the ghouls case, particularly, tends to lead to organic matter rotting away within it, a source of contagion and foulness.)
Even a mindless necromantic construct might be inherently damaging to life, not out of choice, but by their very nature, radiating an aura of life-sapping cold, and withering grass where they tread (like the undead in the awesome intro video to World of Warcraft). They'd be remarkably well-preserved, despite being dead, because no fly could alight on their flesh without having it's tiny life-force snuffed out, and falling cold and dead to the ground. No bacteria teem in it's guts, and worms would squirm away from it's dead flesh, recognizing in some primal way that this meat will consume them, if they attempt to devour it...
A major rules change here would be that negative energy spells drain or dissipate life-force or positive energy, and would affect undead as they do living targets, while positive energy effects would likewise heal and refresh both the living and the undead.
Another rules change would be that undead that do not explicitly drain or consume life-force (or flesh and blood) would need to have some explanation for how they keep functioning, in absence of any vital animating force (since ‘negative energy’ would be the absence of such a force, not an endless supply of free mechanical energy, as it is in the current paradigm). Perhaps skeletons and zombies, in this paradigm, only last a set time, and require a sacrifice of blood and life-energy to animate, and continued expenditures to maintain (perhaps in place of onyx, the caster must slaughter animals or expend his own Con points or something to get the corpses moving, and ‘top them off’ from time to time to keep them going, since ‘negative energy’ is no longer ‘free energy’). Liches and Mummies might have other sources of power that keep them going, either the magic of the phylactery, or of the canopic jars, allowing them to work around the requirements to drain life-energy and exist without constant feeding (although, given the funerary rites of the mummies, and the rituals necessary to become a lich, both might be ‘kickstarted’ into an undead state with sacrifices of animals or humans, before switching over to a ‘diet’ of magical energy), by developing the ability to subsist on the endless magical energy produced by the phylactery (and explaining why it’s destruction can lead to their own).
I’ve never been a fan of the negative or positive energy planes, and this paradigm would do away with both. ‘Positive Energy’ is just a name for life-force, and ‘negative energy’ would be the term for it’s loss.
*********************************************************
IMO, not since 1st edition, with it's positive energy mummies, has their been an entirely consistent portrayal of the positive and negative energy planes (or, as they were called, positive and negative *material* planes). While I'm fond of necromancers and necromancy, I'd really rather have some *consistent* rules, one way or another.
A neutral plane full of neutral energy that, when added to an object, creates a malevolent evil life-hating *mindless* entity that is inexplicably capable of malice, volition and decision-making is just nonsensical, on at least two levels, if not more.
******************************************************
Make the negative plane evil and the positive enegy plane good.
Give 'mindless' undead an Int of 3 and objects animated by positive energy a similar Int 3, good alignment and the tendency to wander off and rescue kittens from trees and help little girls find their mommies in the marketplace and sing 'Be our Guest' to improbably-pretty girls who wandered into their dark castles.
Mark all positive energy spells as [Good], forbid them to evil clerics, and toss in a few spells that allow vampiric healing or transmutative healing or whatever so that they aren't utterly incapable of healing their minions and evil overlords.
Alternately, make all Cure spells Transmutation or Necromancy instead of Conjuration, remove all reference to them tapping into positive energy and allow them to be used by good or evil clerics with impunity.
Poof. Done.
At least until someone brings up why fear spells are Necromancy and not Enchantment, or why spells to create light and spells to create darkness and spells to create damaging sounds are Evocation, and spells to create lights that aren't white or black and not-as-damaging sounds are Illusion, or why spells to conjure energy from the positive energy plane are Conjuration, spells to conjure energy from the negative energy plane are Necromancy and spells to conjure energy from the plane of shadow are Illusion. :)
Oy. Those whacky schools.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
|
I'm pretty sure I remember reading somewhere that Gygax admitted that 1st Ed mummies being linked to the positive material plane was a typo.
I don't have the referenced source, but here's a hearsay link to it being mentioned in the Slayer's Guide to Undead:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/272674-positive-negativ e-energy.html
I have to admit that having creatures that are "evil" and "mindless" at the same time is more than a bit of a problem. Exactly how does a skeleton know the difference between a sleeping baby, a ham roasting on a turnspit, a turnip and a cuckoo clock? The clock is dead wood and metal, yet moves. The turnip is a living root but doesn't move. The ham is dead meat but is moving, powered by a spitjack. The baby is living but still. An intelligent evil creature could figure out what's going on but something mindless? Yes, I know there's the "Lifesight" business, but can it differentiate between animal life and vegetable life, and even if it could, why would the negative energy plane care? Because it's not sporting to tease undead via magehand and a levitating carrot? And even if it's only animal life they hate, is it numbers of lives or volume? Given a choice between a bucket of live shrimp and a cow, which does the skeleton run after first? Or is it proximity? Can a druid stop a horde of undead in their tracks by summoning a swarm of gnats?
And what happens if you animate something as undead that has no real effective attacks, like, say, a swarm of clothes moths? Since they are now a horrible parody and mockery of life, what would they do? Eat the sheep but leave the wool alone? Spontaneously knit sweaters? Both?
The "do the opposite" line of logic very quickly pushes into absurdity, with Satanists attempting to desecrate Christmas by nailing a tree to the ceiling and vomiting candy into their socks.
I also have to admit I dislike any cosmology which states that the rightful place of the dead is going to their respective afterlives to give pedicures to their respective gods, rather than, say, retaining free will and making their own decisions as in life.
|
|
Kevin is on the spot (as usual). I really don't like the "undead = EEEEVIIIL !" route of D&D and I am sad that Paizo goes this way as well. It's killing several nice character ideas - I was always fond of "fight fire with fire, but watch out lest you burn your soul away" vibe of Neutral Necromancers, Malconvokers and others. SKR's "a skeleton is more evil than a 3rd world rapist drug-dealing warlord because skeletons exist to extinguish life" is silly. Sorry Sean, you're the man when it comes to deities and many other things, but this just doesn't float with me.
In my home games, I'm going to run with Todd's version. Shemeska, consider yourself canonic to me, may the shadow of Sigil long show you the right way.
And Mairkurion - cheers, I appoint you as a representative of all leaf-faced humanoids and would like to tell you that the tree in front of my house is BEAUTIFUL. :)
Thanks, Gorbacz.
I should probably add that even if you go with the concept that undead are more EEeevil! than coke-addled drug-dealing serial rapist cannibal pedophiles, there are still times when the greater good or just personal safety makes them a useful tool. If you've got a flock of anthrax-infected sheep, it's a hell of a lot more sanitary to have the necromancer send a skeleton on a kamikaze run, slaughter the sheep, build the pyre, and finally toss itself on it as the final step. Ditto with rabid wolves. And if you go with the concept that natural creatures instinctively shun the horrible Eeevil! presence of the undead, that means a single undead poodle would make a powerful protection against a horrifying natural peril like a plague of mice. And while Fifi the zombie teacup poodle may want to kill you with ever unnatural fibre of her hideous zombified being, the fact is she only has the jaws of a teacup poodle coupled with the speed of a zombie, whereas the plague of mice have thousands and thousands of jaws and are completely capable of eating you alive before you can say "Willard!" or "Bishop Hatto!"
|
|
If you've got a flock of anthrax-infected sheep, it's a hell of a lot more sanitary to have the necromancer send a skeleton on a kamikaze run, slaughter the sheep, build the pyre, and finally toss itself on it as the final step. Ditto with rabid wolves.
Kevin wins the thread, again. And is really close to outdoing his own story on polymorphed radish prostitutes :)
And Mairkurion - cheers, I appoint you as a representative of all leaf-faced humanoids and would like to tell you that the tree in front of my house is BEAUTIFUL. :)
Is is it exotic? Please post pics in the "What is this tree?" thread.
(I guess they didn't name it "Greenman Porn" to fly under the radar.)
I actually agree. I fought to give skeletons and zombies an Intelligence of 3 OR to make them true neutral, but for many reasons (most of which rhyme with "compatibility with 3.5") that wasn't really an option. So I added the bit of flavor text to both that talks about how while they're mindless, their necromantic energy causes them to be evil. It's obviously not a perfect solution (if it were, this thread wouldn't exist), but I do think that it justifies their alignment and mindless state enough to make it make a little bit of sense while maintaining compatibility with 3.5.
In 45 years (hopefully not that soon) when we do Pathfinder 2nd Edition, this is something I'd like to revisit and perhaps change.
Perhaps a PrC that specializes in creating slightly different undead might be in order? I know there is a DnD PrC that allows a good character to summon evil outsiders with out a problem.
|
|
And while Fifi the zombie teacup poodle may want to kill you with ever unnatural fibre of her hideous zombified being, the fact is she only has the jaws of a teacup poodle coupled with the speed of a zombie, whereas the plague of mice have thousands and thousands of jaws and are completely capable of eating you alive before you can say "Willard!" or "Bishop Hatto!"
Keep Fifi in an iron cage, and go with a skeleton. She'll be just as horrible and undead (and, more importantly, rat and vermin-repelling in her unnaturalness), but unable to bark, less smelly and unable to get out of her cage and be any sort of threat (since even an undead teacup poodle should be able to kill people the way that cats so often attempt to, by getting underfoot at the heads of staircases, although cats are not mindless, and this can actually be attributed to maliciousness, not some strange 'destroy all life' program that comes with the 'negative energy' infinite mechanical energy powersource). Indeed, Fifi's old bones can be painted in bright and festive colors, and she can be festooned in pink ribbons, so as not to frighten the children (and to further traumatize the poor undead monster).
Since the official stance is that animate dead is evil, shouldn't this discussion be categorized under "homebrew rules?"
I mean, if I want neutral skeletons and good liches, I can have them in my world.
FWIW, since negative energy is an anathema to life, and making undead marionettes dance for one's own amusement is considered (in polite company) to be something that just isn't done, I see no reason to house-rule in opposition to Paizo's stance.
Animate dead is an evil spell probably because it invariably creates evil creatures.Except that zombies and skeletons have a non-existent intelligence, which means that they're incapable of making moral decisions any more so than an animal. They're automatons that do their master's bidding. As writ, if you don't tell them what to do, they just stand there looking creepy.
Not that it's uncommon for folks to decide that they should be inherently evil creatures. Just look at Classic Horrors Revisited.
I agree with you 100%, and said as much in a post a few months ago. Unintelligent undead SHOULD be no more evil than an unintelligent trap. They both do what they are designed to do, without any moral decisions.
However, Pathfinder zombies and skeletons are listed as evil. This is a change from 3rd edition. For my part, I'm houseruleing that unintelligent undead are Neutral.
EDIT: I need to start reading the whole thread before responding. James Jacobs makes a reasonable argument concerning the flavor text. I'm still houseruling, however, for my campaign. :)
However, Pathfinder zombies and skeletons are listed as evil. This is a change from 3rd edition.
No it's not. Check here or here, for example.
James even stated above that they kept 3.5's evil alignment for mindless undead mostly for backwards compatibility reasons.
Edit: In 3.0 mindless undead were listed as neutral. The change was made going from 3.0 to 3.5.
However, Pathfinder zombies and skeletons are listed as evil. This is a change from 3rd edition.No it's not. Check here or here, for example.
James even stated above that they kept 3.5's evil alignment for mindless undead mostly for backwards compatibility reasons.
Edit: In 3.0 mindless undead were listed as neutral. The change was made going from 3.0 to 3.5.
My 3rd edition Monster Manual says otherwise.
Note I said THIRD, not THREE POINT FIVE.