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It's not a threat against anyone. They're dead, right? passed on, it's just an object, you shouldn't care what is done with it. Right? But my pont is made, you wouldn't like it anymore than you'd like to see their corpse walking around, doing anything, whether it's fighting terrorism or washing dishes. It debases you and dishonors the deceased. That makes it evil.I'll be sure and show up at your loved ones funeral with my skinning knife. And I could use her leg to fix my broken lamp. Maybe mount her head on my wall, ass well.Might want to edit the threats against people's family members.
There's 'over the top rhetoric' and then there's 'strapping a rocket to your ass and headed for Mars.'
You're passing Mars.
JRR gets it. Finally someone gets it. Use your imagination: would you like if someone was digging graves somewhere in your hometown "for spare parts?" what if you find out that one of these zombies pulling the rickshaw used to be your mother? The very notion of undeath IS EVIL!!! as evil as evil can be!!
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As far as the game world, I would suppose that it is simply much easier to create sucessful undead using negative energy, which has the side effect of making the creations inherrently evil.
To get around that, an enterprising Wiz or Clr may try to create undead powered by another force (like the Deathless in Eberron powered by positive energy), or they may power it with pure Arcane energies (Animated Object), or they may try to bind an elemental to it to magically animate the body (Golem).
Heya, MM. Well-written and thoughtful.
But I don't agree with your position. Negative energy isn't any more wicked than any other energy source. Critters powered by positive energy already have a name: living.
Somewhere between 3rd Edition and 3.5, somebody decided that skeletons were evil-aligned, and that animating dead animal corpses was an evil act. (Shrug.) Makes them scarier, I guess. They work fine as neutral creations, as well.
I've argued that undead is evil in Golarion because it is the province of Urgathoa, and Urgathoa is capital-E Evil. (The same way poison use, arguably no worse than invoking fireballs or arrows to kill someone, is evil because it is under Norgerber's aegis, and Norgerber is Evil.) Every use of animate dead, and every transmission of undeath, strengthens Urgathoa, just as everyone who smiles when they see the dawn grants Desna a tiny drop of power.
The same argument would apply in Greyhawk.
Curious, why woul dit apply in Greyhawk? Skeletons and zombies were neutral, and the spell description didn't indicate that the caster would automatically be evil, unless something changed in the setting after they tossed its creator to the curb...
(I lost all interest in Greyhawk after Gygax was no longer involved with its creative direction, so I really have no idea what the settings assumptions were after, say, '86 or so.)
The very notion of undeath IS EVIL!!! as evil as evil can be!!I disagree. Obi-wan was undead after he allowed Vader to kill him.
Nothing personal but... I call foul on this comparison TOZ. Star wars doesn't use DnD concepts of positive/negative energy. Its a better comparison to say Obi-Wan ascended to heaven, and appeared as an angel to luke to help guide him on the right path, then to equate him to a negative energy undead by far.
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Nothing personal but... I call foul on this comparison TOZ. Star wars doesn't use DnD concepts of positive/negative energy. Its a better comparison to say Obi-Wan ascended to heaven, and appeared as an angel to luke to help guide him on the right path, then to equate him to a negative energy undead by far.The very notion of undeath IS EVIL!!! as evil as evil can be!!I disagree. Obi-wan was undead after he allowed Vader to kill him.
You could just as easily say he was a spirit with unfinished business, staying on in the material realm to continue to guide Luke, instead of going on to his final reward of becoming one with the Force. The idea that undeath has to be evil is flawed. I can accept 'because the rules say it is', but not that it is the only way.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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I've noted that earlier in the thread. I'd say it warrants further exploration, but as with 'hurting others' it is rather subjective rather than objective. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are mockeries of newscasters, but I wouldn't call them Evil. :)
But newscasters aren't life, they're newscasters. Newscasters, while possible respected, are not by any stretch sacred. Life is.
Look at the descriptions of good and evil. The first line, they give you the basic gist of Good and Evil, and how do they do it? By contrasting how they deal with Life.
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I've noted that earlier in the thread. I'd say it warrants further exploration, but as with 'hurting others' it is rather subjective rather than objective. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are mockeries of newscasters, but I wouldn't call them Evil. :)But newscasters aren't life, they're newscasters. Newscasters, while possible respected, are not by any stretch sacred. Life is.
Look at the descriptions of good and evil. The first line, they give you the basic gist of Good and Evil, and how do they do it? By contrasting how they deal with Life.
Life isn't sacred. Most people make a mockery of theirs. People are killed by the bucketload over stupid ideology and sit idly by and let it happen. Nothing sacred about something treated so cheaply.
When they die, I reserve the right to reanimate their bodies and make them do my laundry.
Not liking something makes it evil. Ok. All kender are evil, and can be smited, because SOMEONE doesn't like them. Or do you just mean actions that you don't like is evil. I really hate it when people say "mute point" because its nonsensical. Those people are evil and I guess I am justified in murdering them to death.
Evil: 1 a : morally reprehensible : sinful, wicked
b : arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct
2 causing discomfort or repulsionAnimating dead is morally reprehensible. Were it possible in the real world, no culture on earth would let you get away with it.
On a side point, it's "moot point."
1)It's morally reprehensible TO YOU. It's subjective.
2)Whoosh, my comment went over your head. Of course its "moot point" which is why it drives me batty when people say "mute point", the latter is a nonsense phrase. Another example is "for all intensive purposes" gah makes me want to kill someone.
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I love people who talk about moral absolutes in RPGs. What you do is drop them alone in a village, have a bunch of bloodlust-crazed orcs incoming in 15 minutes, and give the player a scroll of animate dead. Aaah, the sweet sound they make when they realize that this scroll is likely the only chance the village has ...
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I love people who talk about moral absolutes in RPGs. What you do is drop them alone in a village, have a bunch of bloodlust-crazed orcs incoming in 15 minutes, and give the player a scroll of animate dead. Aaah, the sweet sound they make when they realize that this scroll is likely the only chance the village has ...
Ah, but this is D&D, where there is a provable and known good afterlife. Several of them, actually...
So it's absolutely in the best interest of good to allow the orcs to butcher the townsfolk, so that they go to the seven heavens and bolster the power of good, by becoming petitioners and celestials. The more valiantly, nobly and heroically they die their futile inevitable deaths, the greater their chances of going to the Upper Planes, and the greater their chances of attaining a position of some power when they get there, due to their saintly martyrdom.
*Every moment* they are alive is another chance for them to be seduced into wickedness, and deliver their souls to the lower planes, bolstering the force of evil. The only logical solution is to slaughter every baby the second it is born, while it is still in a pure innocent 'state of grace,' because to do otherwise is to risk empowering the forces of hell (gehenna, the abyss, acheron, whatever).
If the rules of the world equate souls in the upper planes with a triumph for good and souls in the lower planes with a triumph of evil, the death of a good person becomes a cause to celebrate, as it means that good is winning. The longer a person lives, the greater chance that they'll mess up and lose their spot. Best to kill 'em young. Fill the upper planes with the souls of elven, dwarven, gnomish, halfling and human children, and so ensure the triumph of all that is good and right.
*This* is the 'logic' of D&D morality.
It was also popular during the Spanish Inquisition, when Jews and Moslems would be tortured until they 'repented' and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, and then were *immediately* executed, so that they would die in a state of grace, and not have a chance to backslide into damnation. Entire generations have believed this sort of black and white good and evil stuff, and, IMO, it's boring.
I prefer the game, like the world, to be a little less morally 'easy.'
Making life and death decisions and moral decisions and ethical decisions shouldn't be *easy.* It should be hard. The person who thinks it's easy to tell right from wrong scares the hell out of me.
What's the fun of exploration, whether it be exploration of physical space, intellectual space or moral/ethical space, if it's all been mapped out and there are no dragons?
Should there be room for free will and the concept that one can make a meaningful moral or ethical *choice,* a role-playing environment is to pat and pablum as to either be [Evil] or [Good]?
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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But what makes that situation interesting is that the Good choice is easy to make, it's just impossible to follow through.
Good protects the Innocent.
Good doesn't raise the dead.
Therefore Good would protect the townsfolk without raising the dead.
Is that possible in this situation? Maybe not, in which case BAM, tough moral decision--When faced with two Evil options, which one will I choose, and how will I deal with the consequences of my actions?
Where does the book "Ghostwalk" fit into this?
I'm of the belief that specific undead are not inherently evil themselves. You can have restless spirits and the like that are not inherently evil of themselves.
However... the CREATION of undead is inherently evil because you are channeling negative energy to force something dead to life. Negative energy is evil and is what causes the CREATION of undead to be evil because of the exposure to that energy.
Mindless undead are driven by a evil energy and can be nothing except evil because of that.
Once you add in the soul... intelligence... will... then you come across the grey area with undead. Corporeal undead require the consumption of life to continue. Vampires draw on the very life energy of those they feed on.
Ghosts however do not require anything to continue... and thus depending on what holds them in the material plane... should shape their alignment. A hateful ghost stuck on revenge is going to be evil. A ghost driven by the need to watch over and protect those left behind should be neutral if not good.
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Where does the book "Ghostwalk" fit into this?
I'm of the belief that specific undead are not inherently evil themselves. You can have restless spirits and the like that are not inherently evil of themselves.
In theory, once the souls leaves the body, you become undead, a spirit existing without flesh, and, if once subscribes to the notion that all undead are evil, all souls, even those of paladins, are evil.
Ancestor worshipping tribes? Evil. Obi-Wan Kenobi? Evil. All of the Einherjar, battling in endless repetition as they await Ragnarok?Well, they're dead, and they stubbornly continue to exist, and can even be sent down to earth (by Horn of Valhalla, if nothing else), despite being dead, so, evil.
Once you add in the soul... intelligence... will... then you come across the grey area with undead. Corporeal undead require the consumption of life to continue. Vampires draw on the very life energy of those they feed on.
And yet, a shadow, wraith, ghoul, spectre, vampire, etc. seems to lose that free will. No matter who they were, coming back, even unwillingly (as most do), makes one evil. This extends even to good aligned *dieties* in the Golarion setting, as Arazni the Red Crusader had *an order of Paladins* devoted to her, and after being raised up as an undead creature by Geb, flipped a switch from icon of goodness to cackling evil 'Harlot-Queen' of Geb.
Not even a *god* can resist the immediate change to evil that comes with not staying properly dead.
Ghosts however do not require anything to continue... and thus depending on what holds them in the material plane... should shape their alignment. A hateful ghost stuck on revenge is going to be evil. A ghost driven by the need to watch over and protect those left behind should be neutral if not good.
That would make sense, but flies in the face of the simplistic 'all X is good, all Y is evil, free will doesn't exist' mechanic in play.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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Quote:
Ghosts however do not require anything to continue... and thus depending on what holds them in the material plane... should shape their alignment. A hateful ghost stuck on revenge is going to be evil. A ghost driven by the need to watch over and protect those left behind should be neutral if not good.That would make sense, but flies in the face of the simplistic 'all X is good, all Y is evil, free will doesn't exist' mechanic in play.
This is actually supported in the rules:
When a soul is not allowed to rest due to some great injustice, either real or perceived, it sometimes comes back as a ghost. Such beings are in eternal anguish, lacking in substance and unable to set things right. Although ghosts can be any alignment, the majority cling to the living world out of a powerful sense of rage and hatred, and as a result are chaotic evil—even the ghost of a good or lawful creature can become hateful and cruel in its afterlife.
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This is actually supported in the rules:
When a soul is not allowed to rest due to some great injustice, either real or perceived, it sometimes comes back as a ghost. Such beings are in eternal anguish, lacking in substance and unable to set things right. Although ghosts can be any alignment, the majority cling to the living world out of a powerful sense of rage and hatred, and as a result are chaotic evil—even the ghost of a good or lawful creature can become hateful and cruel in its afterlife.
Yup, such it is in the world of D&D. A mother dies in childbirth, her spirit hangs around to provide for her child, but magically turns evil because her love, stronger than death, instantly transforms into hate and wickedness.
So, in this world, you can have a sense of duty and loyalty and focus on completing a mission so strong that it turns you chaotic. 'Cause that's what chaos is all about. Duty, honor, loyalty, completing the mission, even in the face of oblivion. Never abandoning your post, or leaving your buddies behind. Go team chaos!
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This is actually supported in the rules:
When a soul is not allowed to rest due to some great injustice, either real or perceived, it sometimes comes back as a ghost. Such beings are in eternal anguish, lacking in substance and unable to set things right. Although ghosts can be any alignment, the majority cling to the living world out of a powerful sense of rage and hatred, and as a result are chaotic evil—even the ghost of a good or lawful creature can become hateful and cruel in its afterlife.Yup, such it is in the world of D&D. A mother dies in childbirth, her spirit hangs around to provide for her child, but magically turns evil because her love, stronger than death, instantly transforms into hate and wickedness.
So, in this world, you can have a sense of duty and loyalty and focus on completing a mission so strong that it turns you chaotic. 'Cause that's what chaos is all about. Duty, honor, loyalty, completing the mission, even in the face of oblivion. Never abandoning your post, or leaving your buddies behind. Go team chaos!
Why does this idea frustrate you? I rather like the notion that, regardless of intent and mindfulness, some states of being are essentially corrupting. It's frightening, totally at odds with our modern, manifest sense of self. When you say certain things are evil just because, you're attributing an elementalism to evil that makes it untamable. It puts evil in the gut rather than the mind. This may at times be annoyingly black-and-white, but it places humanity lower on the metaphysical food chain, less in control of its destiny. I dig it (from a game perspective only).
Play with negative energy and your soul gets scorched, boyo, even if you're using it to save Nana from the werewarthogs! ;)
This is actually supported in the rules:
When a soul is not allowed to rest due to some great injustice, either real or perceived, it sometimes comes back as a ghost. Such beings are in eternal anguish, lacking in substance and unable to set things right. Although ghosts can be any alignment, the majority cling to the living world out of a powerful sense of rage and hatred, and as a result are chaotic evil—even the ghost of a good or lawful creature can become hateful and cruel in its afterlife.Yup, such it is in the world of D&D. A mother dies in childbirth, her spirit hangs around to provide for her child, but magically turns evil because her love, stronger than death, instantly transforms into hate and wickedness.
So, in this world, you can have a sense of duty and loyalty and focus on completing a mission so strong that it turns you chaotic. 'Cause that's what chaos is all about. Duty, honor, loyalty, completing the mission, even in the face of oblivion. Never abandoning your post, or leaving your buddies behind. Go team chaos!
I can easily agree with the fact that the majority of undead are all evil because they must consume life to continue and most do so with great gusto. Ghouls and Ghasts eat their victims alive, Vampires and Spectres drain the very life from their prey, Shadows consume their victims physical strength, and Wraiths consume the vitality of their foes.
However that magically becoming evil is in the will of the DM. Love in this instance does not need to become "hate and wickedness" and is actually supported by the rules for Ghosts as "they can be any alignment."
I support the view that Ghosts are different from the majority of undead because they are held to unlife not by negative energy or created as spawn but instead by their own wills.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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So it's absolutely in the best interest of good to allow the orcs to butcher the townsfolk, so that they go to the seven heavens and bolster the power of good, by becoming petitioners and celestials. The more valiantly, nobly and heroically they die their futile inevitable deaths, the greater their chances of going to the Upper Planes, and the greater their chances of attaining a position of some power when they get there, due to their saintly martyrdom.
*Every moment* they are alive is another chance for them to be seduced into wickedness, and deliver their souls to the lower planes, bolstering the force of evil. The only logical solution is to slaughter every baby the second it is born, while it is still in a pure innocent 'state of grace,' because to do otherwise is to risk empowering the forces of hell (gehenna, the abyss, acheron, whatever).
If the rules of the world equate souls in the upper planes with a triumph for good and souls in the lower planes with a triumph of evil, the death of a good person becomes a cause to celebrate, as it means that good is winning. The longer a person lives, the greater chance that they'll mess up and lose their spot. Best to kill 'em young. Fill the upper planes with the souls of elven, dwarven, gnomish, halfling and human children, and so ensure the triumph of all that is good and right.
*This* is the 'logic' of D&D morality.
Wow, Cathari D&D. :-)
Why does this idea frustrate you? I rather like the notion that, regardless of intent and mindfulness, some states of being are essentially corrupting. It's frightening, totally at odds with our modern, manifest sense of self. When you say certain things are evil just because, you're attributing an elementalism to evil that makes it untamable. It puts evil in the gut rather than the mind. This may at times be annoyingly black-and-white, but it places humanity lower on the metaphysical food chain, less in control of its destiny. I dig it (from a game perspective only).
Play with negative energy and your soul gets scorched, boyo, even if you're using it to save Nana from the werewarthogs! ;)
The idea frustrates me because it cuts off a huge swath of folklore and fantasy literature. Look up the motif of "the grateful dead" here:
http://www.ruthenia.ru/folklore/thompson/e.htm
Note: Here "the grateful dead" is referring to a folktale motif of ghost or other undead people being grateful to the living and wishing to thank them for some kindness. This is not a reference to the psychedelic rock band headed by Jerry Garcia (though as he is now dead he could return as one of the grateful dead in the other sense, from a folkloric perspective).
If I want to tell a grateful dead ghost story in Pathfinder, I'm going to. Currently, the ghost listing allows this, but I'd really hate it if suddenly it didn't.
Similarly, I like the idea of neutral necromancy as being an option. And even if we decide to go with the idea that the negative material plane is in fact "The Crawling Darkness" and every skeleton and zombie you make with it is intrinsically evil and wishes (in its mindless way) to hack or chew all living things to death, that just opens another can of worms.
I mean, if an uncontrolled zombie goes wandering around looking for people to eat, but an uncontrolled animated object just sits there, it poses a philosophical and important metaphysical question: Is the magical source of animation for animated ropes and other animated objects truly neutral or just apathetic? Could you use this source of power to animate a corpse and get a zombie that didn't crave the flesh of the living when it had nothing better to do? What about the broom of animated attack? That's an animated object and yet it really seems to hate all life and want to destroy it too. Is it therefore evil, or is it under a unique broom-like mission to destroy all dirt, and due to the curse, it mistakes life-force for dirt and tries to beat it out of people?
And can an evil priest pray to their evil gods and use animate object to animate, say, an evil coffee table that when uncommanded will viciously roam the countryside looking to bash the shins of the living and even the undead? If the evil priest and the evil god are in agreement about the need to animate an evil coffee table, can't animate objects get an evil descriptor? Or does it have to stubbornly remain neutral, and when not commanded to do evil, the coffee table will just sit there, mindlessly, and worse, it could be conceivably be commanded to simply be helpful instead, wander around serving coffee, give children pony rides, even work as a mobile backboard to carry injured paladins off to the hospital?
And if the evil priest can make an evil animated object, why can't the good wizard make a neutral skeleton? Beyond the obvious trick of using a skeleton, a bit of wire, and a few strings along with Invisibility, Animate Rope, Mage Hand, and Performance (Puppetry)?
But wait, you're saying that using any human bones for puppetry would still be evil? What happens if the wizard decides paper mache is cheaper and lighter? Is that then not evil? Is it any different than an illusionist making the illusion of a skeleton?
And if the evil is simply a matter of disturbing the living and freaking them out, can't a 1st level Illusionist make an illusion that's far more disturbing and upsetting than a single shambling corpse?
bringing back the dead to do your bidding is an inherently evil act, whether done for noble purposes or not.
and as such, you'd get yourself a dark side point in my campaign.
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But when I'm outside of the game, and someone asks the question, I'd like to hear something more sensible than 'because it is'.
One thing that leaps to mind immediately is that by animating a corpse you make it inherently harder to come back to life. While the soul itself is gone to whichever plane it belongs, I propose that some shred of that spark of life is corrupted which makes it inherently evil.
Corpses are unlike objects which not being previously sentient have none of this spark in the first place are not subject to corruption. Though I could see binding a soul to an object, effectively giving you a golem which may or may not hold a non-neutral alignment. This solves your coffee table dilemma nicely.
BTW possession of a corpse in whole or in part is a crime. Given that criminal law is as close to a moral consensus as we have in the US I'd say it's considered evil by a decent portion of the population.
This thread reminds me of Hoar, a 2ed god of Vengeance(I am pretty certain he was a good deity), that if a preist of Hoar oversaw the funeral of someone that died a violent death there was a small chance the spirit would raise as a revnant and seek its revenge.
I remember we got lucky in one campaign and raised one, the DM was shocked and we watched the revnant destroy our enemy and most of that adventure [we helped a little], but it was a lot of fun to be the peanut gallery and go "Ouch!" "Oh, man you see that he just barreled through that trap". Not to mention he made an excellent bloodhound.
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One thing that leaps to mind immediately is that by animating a corpse you make it inherently harder to come back to life. While the soul itself is gone to whichever plane it belongs, I propose that some shred of that spark of life is corrupted which makes it inherently evil.
That's more due to the limitations of raise dead. I can see the corpse being corrupted and too difficult to raise via the lesser spells, but that doesn't really make it evil. Sure it is a dick move if I animate your horse when you were going to raise it, but it doesn't really make it an evil act.
Corpses are unlike objects which not being previously sentient have none of this spark in the first place are not subject to corruption. Though I could see binding a soul to an object, effectively giving you a golem which may or may not hold a non-neutral alignment. This solves your coffee table dilemma nicely.
BTW possession of a corpse in whole or in part is a crime. Given that criminal law is as close to a moral consensus as we have in the US I'd say it's considered evil by a decent portion of the population.
Criminal law is not the best guide for what is morally right. It's based on the relative morality of the populance. Remember, it used to be legal to beat your spouse. Hell, in some places it still is! I am, of course, aware that this is as good as a reason for me as it is for you.
I absolutely agree that using the forces of animate object to animate a corpse is a legitimate recourse. Which begs the question, why waste space on two separate spells? Make it animate object with a clause 'the caster imbues the object with an alignment of his choice. Evil necromancers use this spell on corpses to create mindless undead to plague the living.'
undead bring negative energy into the world which makes it darker and more evil.
Except negative energy isn't evil, so that makes no sense.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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Maybe the idea is that Negative Energy isn't Evil, but it doesn't belong here.
So Inflict Wounds isn't a problem because the energy dissipates quickly enough to not cause trouble. Animate Dead on the other hand gives the Negative Energy a chance to linger on in the material world, causing all sorts of trouble.
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That's more due to the limitations of raise dead. I can see the corpse being corrupted and too difficult to raise via the lesser spells, but that doesn't really make it evil. Sure it is a dick move if I animate your horse when you were going to raise it, but it doesn't really make it an evil act.
What in your eyes *is* evil? You seem to be stuck on this 'it's all relative' kick, which doesn't make sense to me. Obviously it isn't desecrating the fallen.
Criminal law is not the best guide for what is morally right.
You shall not kill. A pretty common message amongst the majority of religion (by population), and very common in codified law. I would state that law (of the criminal variety at least) is an expression of morality. While not all (criminal) law is representative of what is or is not an evil act, the most pervasive ones would seem to be on the right track.
I absolutely agree that using the forces of animate object to animate a corpse is a legitimate recourse.
Not sure who you're agreeing with, but it certainly isn't me.
Except negative energy isn't evil, so that makes no sense.
Then why is it that evil clerics are the ones channeling negative energy and the good ones positive energy? This isn't simply which side of the battery you're placing the red and black cables.
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What in your eyes *is* evil? You seem to be stuck on this 'it's all relative' kick, which doesn't make sense to me. Obviously it isn't desecrating the fallen.
Does it cause harm? Yes = Evil.
Edit: I have, however, tried to stick to the RAW definition of Evil in this discussion.
You shall not kill.
Except when it's an infidel. Or an enemy of the state. Then the faithful and our noble soldiers are perfectly justified in murdering dudes. Laws can follow both good and evil depending on who is writing the law.
Then why is it that evil clerics are the ones channeling negative energy and the good ones positive energy? This isn't simply which side of the battery you're placing the red and black cables.
Neutral clerics can cannel negative too. And Inflict doesn't have the Evil tag.
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Maybe the idea is that Negative Energy isn't Evil, but it doesn't belong here.
Well, yeah, it's from other dimension.
So's *Positive Energy.* Do I get dark side points for pulling that energy from another dimension into our dimension, and upsetting the natural order of things by healing someone who was supposed to die, or resurrecting someone who was already dead?
I'm messing with the natural order, defying the laws of nature, and pumping alien extradimensional energy into a ravaged body to allow it to cheat death, flip off mother nature, deny the gods the souls of their followers and steal a few more years (or rounds) of life, despite having suffered an injury that was *supposed* to have killed it.
Magical healing is *totally* unnatural.
I think the simple evil lies in the fact it does not create constructs, it creates undead. There can be shades of marality in anything, but in a game like D&D there have to be some absolutes, creating undead should in my opinion be a moral absolute for the campaign to function.
If you choose to ignore this I believe you are better served playing a campaign without alignment, because practically everything is open to debate wether it is infact evil or not. It is better to say, ok it is an evil act, but can it be justified to use some evil for a greater good ?
In any way I do not think this is something to be used on a regular basis by good aligned people, they should at best be extremely reluctant to use it.
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One thing that leaps to mind immediately is that by animating a corpse you make it inherently harder to come back to life. While the soul itself is gone to whichever plane it belongs, I propose that some shred of that spark of life is corrupted which makes it inherently evil.That's more due to the limitations of raise dead. I can see the corpse being corrupted and too difficult to raise via the lesser spells, but that doesn't really make it evil. Sure it is a dick move if I animate your horse when you were going to raise it, but it doesn't really make it an evil act.
Corpses are unlike objects which not being previously sentient have none of this spark in the first place are not subject to corruption. Though I could see binding a soul to an object, effectively giving you a golem which may or may not hold a non-neutral alignment. This solves your coffee table dilemma nicely.
BTW possession of a corpse in whole or in part is a crime. Given that criminal law is as close to a moral consensus as we have in the US I'd say it's considered evil by a decent portion of the population.
Criminal law is not the best guide for what is morally right. It's based on the relative morality of the populance. Remember, it used to be legal to beat your spouse. Hell, in some places it still is! I am, of course, aware that this is as good as a reason for me as it is for you.
I absolutely agree that using the forces of animate object to animate a corpse is a legitimate recourse. Which begs the question, why waste space on two separate spells? Make it animate object with a clause 'the caster imbues the object with an alignment of his choice. Evil necromancers use this spell on corpses to create mindless undead to plague the living.'
undead bring negative energy into the world which makes it darker and more evil.Except negative energy isn't evil, so that makes no sense.
Okay, I think I can see a philosophical root to your original question: Animate Dead is to you, and to many other posters, a victimless crime. So classifying it as an evil act seems arbitrary and almost prudish. The only harm done if to a culture's sense of propriety. I hope I'm on the right track here.
There was a thread a few months back that discussed the nature of magic and spellcasting. The OP wanted help making sense of the contradictions that made it difficult to storytell magic. One of the posters presented the concept of authorship; that the flavor of a spell is largely the creation of the original wizard who discovered or created it. Every Animate Dead spell in every spellbook is basically a copy of the very first Animate Dead. As a caster you are not casting your spell, you are casting his spell. You are not entirely in control, you are a vessel of translation. The first, original, Animate Dead spell came from a very evil place and required nasty practices to bring it to form that could be written and passed on. It may have been given to wizard-kind by a dark god who wished to see it promulgated.
It's evil because evil made it, and the way in which you use it does not erase its history or its nature.
It gets more complicated when you add sorcery to the mix, but I think it's an interesting angle.
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Does it cause harm? Yes = Evil.
In that case your animating my horse is an evil act, not just a 'dick move'.
Edit: I have, however, tried to stick to the RAW definition of Evil in this discussion.
You've cast an evil spell, casting an evil spell is an evil act as per RAW.
The basic problem with RAW is you can't question RAW, at best RAW can explain it's motives as an aid to GM ruling.
Except when it's an infidel. Or an enemy of the state. Then the faithful and our noble soldiers are perfectly justified in murdering dudes. Laws can follow both good and evil depending on who is writing the law.
And this is why I was about to edit my post to the other translation of "you shall not murder", which is a much narrower definition. Much of the 'kill the infidel' BS is a perversion of holy texts and by it's very nature evil itself.
Neutral clerics can cannel negative too. And Inflict doesn't have the Evil tag.
Neutral clerics *may* channel negative energy, they *may* also channel positive energy. Neutral clerics *must* choose which side of the razor's edge of neutral they sit upon via the positive/negative energy channeling option.
BTW Cure spells don't have the good tag.
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In that case your animating my horse is an evil act, not just a 'dick move'.
I won't argue that, as it is too subjective.
You've cast an evil spell, casting an evil spell is an evil act as per RAW.
The basic problem with RAW is you can't question RAW, at best RAW can explain it's motives as an aid to GM ruling.
And yet nothing in the definition of Evil supports it being an Evil spell.
I totally agree that the 'kill infidels' is the work of some cleric turning it to his own purposes. Or the original authors having a different morality than we do. Hence why I think they are like any other set of laws. Good for inspiration, not for blind following.
Neutral clerics *may* channel negative energy, they *may* also channel positive energy. Neutral clerics *must* choose which side of the razor's edge of neutral they sit upon via the positive/negative energy channeling option.
BTW Cure spells don't have the good tag.
Positive energy is no more good than negative is evil. Just because neutral clerics have to choose one option or the other does not make negative energy evil. Neutral is not a fine line between good and evil. It's a valley between two mountain tops.
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I won't argue that, as it is too subjective.
You caused me harm, how is that subjective?
And yet nothing in the definition of Evil supports it being an Evil spell.
That's RAI TOZ, not RAW. Don't get me wrong, I'm for RAI over RAW in just about every instance, but if you're arguing RAW it's evil.
Neutral is not a fine line between good and evil. It's a valley between two mountain tops.
Neutral the alignment is a ditch between two lanes of a road, but even within that ditch a neutral cleric must choose one side or another as 'neutral energy' does not exist.
Instead of 'shades of grey' I believe in weight of significance. I believe that DnD and PF use this in their game mechanics by promoting good and evil as absolutes. For instance did I get a refill of soda when I ordered water, or did I set fire to someone's home. In the former an evil is committed, in the latter a much greater evil is committed.
IMC alignment is assumed to be what's on the sheet unless I notice a pattern of significant actions not compliant with the stated alignment.
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Oh I would not but I was merely making a joke at the silliness of your statement that it would make any sense for all killing to be evil in the game of D&D considering that it has a class that is a paragon of good and is given lots of abilities to kill people.
Hence why I was considering using the translation that substitutes murder for kill.
Now according to my research none of their abilities are 'kill creature X', but rather along the lines of 'smite evil' and a ton of auras. A paladin in an 'any paladin that kills immediately falls' campaign would simply be restricted from making killing blow. Arguably also to try and revive any creatures that are struck down in battle.
I've sadly seen a DM that runs paladins as 'lawful stupid' and *must* keep all allies to his code or else lose all abilities without possibility of atonement. Same DM also stated that the BBEG was a raised paladin that flipped to evil because someone dared asked that he come back (instead of simply refusing as per RAW, but I digress too much already).