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You caused me harm, how is that subjective?
Let me see, I animated your horse, which means you can't spend the money to raise it. So you can use that money to buy another horse. And if I am your friend and order the animated beast to plow your field, I'm helping, not harming you, aren't I?
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.
You're right, by RAW it is evil. And like many of the rules, it is nonsensical.
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.
I think getting soda instead of water is more Chaotic than Evil, but that's irrelevant. I understand the rules trying to deal in absolutes, but the downside of that is that they are not internally consistent with that design goal.
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Let me see, I animated your horse, which means you can't spend the money to raise it. So you can use that money to buy another horse. And if I am your friend and order the animated beast to plow your field, I'm helping, not harming you, aren't I?
You took away my freedom to do as I please with my property. That is harm. Then you dare plow *my* field with a mockery to all life? [Can you tell I'm a batshit insane libertarian that isn't fond of undead?]
You're right, by RAW it is evil. And like many of the rules, it is nonsensical.
You claimed to be arguing by RAW, calling it nonsensical doesn't mean anything. Now if you want to argue RAI that's a different matter entirely.
I think getting soda instead of water is more Chaotic than Evil, but that's irrelevant. I understand the rules trying to deal in absolutes, but the downside of that is that they are not internally consistent with that design goal.
Theft is chaotic instead of evil? At least in the establishments I've been to (tap) water is free while soda costs.
I disagree about the internal consistency of the rules when considering the absolutes of good and evil. Not all good acts have the good descriptor, and not all evil acts have the evil descriptor. Now this is because most actions aren't spells and as such have no descriptors, but I believe that only certain spells are flagged as good (or evil, lawful, chaotic) because the act of casting itself is a significant act of that alignment and is noted as such.
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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 didn't say 'unnatural', I said "doesn't belong here". I was thinking something along the lines of the material world being Positive Energy 'turf' (since everything here runs on it), and that Negative Energy, being a rival gang, just isn't welcome.
I'm not saying that's how it is (or that anything in the game even remotely indicates as such), I'm just throwing out ideas :D
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"Energy from both planes infuses reality, the ebb and flow of this energy running through all creatures to bear them along the journey from birth to death."
Oops, guess I'm not quite up on my planar mechanics, am I?
I did find the line just before that interesting though
Two energy planes exist—the Positive Energy Plane (from which the animating spark of life hails) and the Negative Energy Plane (from which the sinister taint of undeath hails). [/url]
So I guess Animate Dead is Evil because Undeath is a "sinister taint".
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I expect people will wish to know why undeath is a sinister taint before this discussion is be over.
Not me. Everyone has their own idea of what negative energy is, varying between the aforementioned Crawling Darkness and Playing With Fire options. Whenever someone writes a sourcebook, it's assuming their favored idea, which then conflicts with other writers and their favored idea. So the rules try to cater to both and end up with neither.
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Everyone has their own idea of what negative energy is, varying between the aforementioned Crawling Darkness and Playing With Fire options.
Could you cite some examples of this 'negative energy is simply another force and not evil at all in no way shape or form' idea?
Aside from message boards I've never received the sentiment that negative energy was anything but evil energy. Even people playing neutral clerics that channel negative energy say things along the lines of 'I'm not quite evil, close, but not evil'.
Everyone has their own idea of what negative energy is, varying between the aforementioned Crawling Darkness and Playing With Fire options.Could you cite some examples of this 'negative energy is simply another force and not evil at all in no way shape or form' idea?
Aside from message boards I've never received the sentiment that negative energy was anything but evil energy. Even people playing neutral clerics that channel negative energy say things along the lines of 'I'm not quite evil, close, but not evil'.
Check out this line from Frank and K's oft-quoted Tome of Necromancy: "Energons: Eregons are actually made out of energy. So if Positive and Negative Energy have an alignment, so do they. If using the Crawling Darkness option, the Xag-Ya is Neutral Good, and the Xeg-Yi is Neutral Evil. If using the Playing With Fire option, both remain as printed – they are Neutral."
The Xag-Ya and Xeg-Yi most recently appeared in the 3.0 Manual of the Planes. I just checked the Wizards 3.5 conversion guide for the Manual of the Planes and it did not include any notes to "make them evil" so it does have, by the 3.5 rules, neutral elementals from the negative energy plane.
Now, this is not Pathfinder because I don't think either creature was released to the SRD, but since Pathfinder is designed for backwards compatibility, no matter how evil you say the negative material plane is now it still has neutral creatures wandering around it.
I think in most campaigns the abbundant use of negative energy powered spells are a bit of a grey zone, it is distasteful and might be frowned upon but it is not quite evil unless used for evil purposes.
I can think of two reasons that could make this spell evil :
1) Animate Dead evil because it creates evil creatures.
Now what boggles people is how a mindless creature can be evil. Simply put a mindless creature still is capable of emotion and very basic thought or instinct, any shred of motivation that drives it can only be described as evil, a tortued creature that has no real place in this world.
2) In a more general way it is disrespectful to all life and generally thought of as taboo by any and all good religions and cultural norms.
By all means you can create a campaign where it is accepted practice and slavery is common, but in the typical D&D campaign both are tools used by team evil and is otherwise taboo. In a campaign of moral absolutes some decisions must be made wether something is evil or not and the short guideline on morality that describes alignment does not nearly cover it all.
Everyone has their own idea of what negative energy is, varying between the aforementioned Crawling Darkness and Playing With Fire options.Could you cite some examples of this 'negative energy is simply another force and not evil at all in no way shape or form' idea?
Aside from message boards I've never received the sentiment that negative energy was anything but evil energy. Even people playing neutral clerics that channel negative energy say things along the lines of 'I'm not quite evil, close, but not evil'.
Check out this line from Frank and K's oft-quoted Tome of Necromancy: "Energons: Eregons are actually made out of energy. So if Positive and Negative Energy have an alignment, so do they. If using the Crawling Darkness option, the Xag-Ya is Neutral Good, and the Xeg-Yi is Neutral Evil. If using the Playing With Fire option, both remain as printed – they are Neutral."
The Xag-Ya and Xeg-Yi most recently appeared in the 3.0 Manual of the Planes. I just checked the Wizards 3.5 conversion guide for the Manual of the Planes and it did not include any notes to "make them evil" so it does have, by the 3.5 rules, neutral elementals from the negative energy plane.
Now, this is not Pathfinder because I don't think either creature was released to the SRD, but since Pathfinder is designed for backwards compatibility, no matter how evil you say the negative material plane is now it still has neutral creatures wandering around it.
I think Xeg-Yi are prolly best served as evil though might still be neutral, though Xag-Ya wouldnt actually be good in my book. Nobody ever said positive and negative plane have to be mirror images of eachother.
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Could you cite some examples of this 'negative energy is simply another force and not evil at all in no way shape or form' idea?
Manual of the Planes 3rd edition, page 80. Planes with evil alignment traits (fully described on p 13) include Baator, the Abyss, Carceri / Tartarus, Gehenna and Hades. The negative energy plane is not even *mildly* evil-aligned, nor is the positive energy plane even mildly good-aligned. Both of the native outsiders listed in the book, the Energons (Xag-Ya from the positive energy plane and Xeg-Yi from the negative energy plane) are, of course, neutral (Always neutral at that!), and *not* mindless, so they are Neutral by choice, not by default because they are too stupid to have an alignment (like Int 2 animals or Int - animals).
Other examples would include 1st edition AD&D, which had the same neutral-aligned negative 'material' plane and positive 'material' plane, and the same neutral aligned Xag-Ya and Xeg-Yi, introduced, IIRC, in Monster Manual 2.
The negative material and positive material planes, and the xag-ya and xeg-yi remained neutral, unconcerned with either good or evil, in 2nd edition and Planescape as well.
With 3.5, in 2003, the idea of skeletons and zombies being evil was added to the game, because, it was stated by the developers at that time 'they wanted paladins to be able to smite skeletons.'
For the previous 28 years, skeletons and zombies, just like the negative energy that empowered them, were neutral, and, somehow, nobody freaked out that negative energy wasn't evil.
This is a new idea, and one that is irrelevant in Pathfinder, since Pathfinder Paladins can *explicitly* smite undead, even if they are mindless and incapable of moral or ethical decision-making.
So, there's your examples. AD&D 1st edition. AD&D 2nd edition. D&D 3rd edition.
With 3.5, an inconsistency was added to the game, and now, people who don't recognize it as both new and contradictory, are quoting it as if it is some sort of obvious truth that's 'always been that way.'
Instead of making a rule that Paladins could smite mindless undead, despite their not being evil, they made a rule that these particular creatures, animated by mindless neutral energy, were evil, while stitched together piles of corpses, animated by an enslaved sentient creature, and prone to going on murderous killing sprees, was *not* evil.
Never mind that the same Monster Manual 3.5 that included this change still required a mindless vermin or Int 2 animal to be bumped up to Intelligence 3 before it could become an evil or good Fiendish or Celestial animal, because, what a shock, the designers of 3rd edition didn't think that mindless critters (or even Int 2 animals!) could make an ethical or moral choice.
Note also that the 3.5 Monster Manual, despite re-aligning skeletons as 'evil' explicitly says;
"A skeleton only does what it is ordered to do. It can draw no conclusions of its own and takes no initiative."
That's a pretty far cry from 'life hating malevolence that runs around killing all living things in absence of orders otherwise!' which seems to be what people who haven't bothered to read the 3.5 description are saying is in fact gospel.
Whoever chose to 'fix' skeletons and zombies by making them evil in 3.5 didn't even care enough about this change to have the flavor text not explicitly contradict it, in the same darn entry, by making the skeleton no more malevolent than a chair.
The Pathfinder write up at least bothered to change the flavor text to not contradict the new 'evil' tag, indicating that they were at least paying attention to what they were writing, and, in Pathfinder, celestial and fiendish creatures are no longer good or evil (and retain their normal Int scores), so that doesn't contradict anything either. (Which, yes, does create the hilarious situation where a Paladin can smite a mindless skeleton, but not a fiendish tyrannosaurus called up from the depths of hell itself.)
Edit: Just noted that The Great Beyond also lists the negative energy plane as having no alignment descriptor, and being even a bit evil (although it's certainly deadly, much like visiting the equally un-aligned plane of fire!). Similarly, the native creatures (whose name I'm not even gonna try to spell!) are described as not being evil as well.
So, yet another specific example of negative energy, and creatures powered by negative energy, being non-evil.
Personally I had hoped Pathfinder would destroy the fiendish / celestial templates, bunny from hell just doesnt do it for me. To me they are just a shortcut for easy use, I much prefer summoning a hell hound or hell cat rather than a pet dog with tiny horns and some lame stat adjustment.
On the subject of skeletons being evil in recent editions of the game, I think 3.5 made a good change from a fantasy fiction point of view it works for me. Like holy water burns, 'holy smite' damages and paladins can smite them. I like to keep my campaign far away from the utility undead that destroys the flavour of good and evil.
Hi,
some times ago I played a cleric of Heironeous (yes, we still using the Greyhawk Pantheon^^) and I stumbeled about the "Animate Dead" spell, this spell was marked as [EVIL].
In some way I understand why, but isn't it possible to use it as good spell? Or creating a good/neutral version of this spell?I thinking of something like the cleric asked his god to sent back the fallen, which were slayn in battle, to fight by his side against a evil.
Not raising them against their will, but asking for their help.As I thought about it, I have to think at the nordish mythology, where the good man wait in valhalla until the last battle. Then go back to earth to fight side on side with the goods.
Why not something like this for a good/neutral cleric?Sure the spell has to be altered, something like:
School [no idea, only non-evil clerics] ; Level cleric 3
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, M (holy dust worth at least 25 gp per Hit Die of the undead)
Range touch
Targets one or more corpses touched
Duration one battle
Saving Throw none
Spell Resistance noWhat do you think?
Maybe a bonus to turn resistance, because they aren't exactly undeads.
One of my friends illustrated this answeer to me once, when I asked it of him.
Imagine, if you will, a white robed elven woman. Pale, beautiful. Just.. Wow. Not so much in a lusty way, but in a pure way. She strides into the battlefield of the wounded, dying, and the dead. Perhaps you're one of the wounded, and she strides by. You croak a hello, perhaps wanting someone to speak to while you wait for medics.
She leans down, and whispers something to you.
"Don't worry. I'm one of the good guys."
Confused, you watch as she raises up, and walks up to one of your many dead companions. Oh dear, perhaps she shall bring him back to life. How wonderful!
Wait.. Why is its skin falling off. Why.. why is it getting up.. Oh my god. The bones. THE BONES! SHE RAISED HIM AS A ZOMBIE! THE HORROR! THE HORROR!
*Cough*
One of my friends illustrated this answeer to me once, when I asked it of him.
Imagine, if you will, a white robed elven woman. Pale, beautiful. Just.. Wow. Not so much in a lusty way, but in a pure way. She strides into the battlefield of the wounded, dying, and the dead. Perhaps you're one of the wounded, and she strides by. You croak a hello, perhaps wanting someone to speak to while you wait for medics.
She leans down, and whispers something to you.
"Don't worry. I'm one of the good guys."
Confused, you watch as she raises up, and walks up to one of your many dead companions. Oh dear, perhaps she shall bring him back to life. How wonderful!
Wait.. Why is its skin falling off. Why.. why is it getting up.. Oh my god. The bones. THE BONES! SHE RAISED HIM AS A ZOMBIE! THE HORROR! THE HORROR!...
The elven woman turns, still serenely beautiful but troubled. "Oh dear," she says. "This one appears to be in shock. Bear him gently, my minions. Take him back to the medic tent."
"They're zombies!" you hoarsely croak, still overcome with horror.
"Skeletons," she corrects. "They're much faster and far more sanitary."
The skeletons bony fingers lift you and place you into a litter and you pass out, overcome by the horror of seeing your dead companions skeletons walking around, and probably the earlier part where they were butchered alive, stabbed with swords and pierced with arrows. Not counting the guy you saw get turned into a pig and hit with a fireball at the same time. The aroma of roast pork will always fill you with horror as well.
You awake in the medic tent, but are now much more okay with seeing skeletons due to the fact that the chirurgeon has given you some wonderful alchemical concoction called "opium."
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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The skeletons bony fingers lift you and place you into a litter and you pass out, overcome by the horror of seeing your dead companions skeletons walking around, and probably the earlier part where they were butchered alive, stabbed with swords and pierced with arrows. Not counting the guy you saw get turned into a pig and hit with a fireball at the same time. The aroma of roast pork will always fill you with horror as well.
You awake in the medic tent, but are now much more okay with seeing skeletons due to the fact that the chirurgeon has given you some wonderful alchemical concoction called "opium."
You have just given me the most evil idea. My group used to have dinner before we played. Fix a nice meal, pork chops, stuffing, etc. Then they encounter the evil wizard, who's selling off his enemies as pigs to be slaughtered. Have the party discover this as they see someone carving a pig...
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Check out this line from Frank and K's oft-quoted Tome of Necromancy:
As far as I can tell this is some kind of homebrew material, and I've only seen you quote it. Surely it's an example of the notion, but if I scour the web I can find molemen conspiracy theories as well.
...no matter how evil you say the negative material plane is now it still has neutral creatures wandering around it.
By that logic Warforged, Crusaders, Swordsages, and Warblades are running around the material plane.
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Manual of the Planes 3rd edition, page 80. Planes with evil alignment traits (fully described on p 13) include Baator, the Abyss, Carceri / Tartarus, Gehenna and Hades. The negative energy plane is not even *mildly* evil-aligned, nor is the positive energy plane even mildly good-aligned.
First we're getting off on a tangent as plane does not equal energy, but for sake of argument Hell (Baator) is only 'mildly evil', and Pandemonium (the plane that can make you insane from just being there) is mildly chaotic. Further the negative energy plane is described as 'the blackest night' 'heart of darkness' and 'the hunger that devours souls'. Call me crazy (I've called myself such in this thread), that just smacks of evil to me, a little bit, just a touch, kinda evil.
Other examples would include 1st edition AD&D, which had the same neutral-aligned negative 'material' plane and positive 'material' plane, and the same neutral aligned Xag-Ya and Xeg-Yi, introduced, IIRC, in Monster Manual 2.
Again not energy. Men and primates, ham and bacon, star wars and star trek. All these things are closely (by various definitions of close) related, but are not the same thing.
With 3.5, in 2003, the idea of skeletons and zombies being evil was added to the game, because, it was stated by the developers at that time 'they wanted paladins to be able to smite skeletons.'
I'll take your word on that, mostly because I don't have nearly decade old source material on hand. That looks very much like an oversight to me considering outside of spirits you don't see undead as the good guys, but as an unnatural blight.
With 3.5, an inconsistency was added to the game, and now, people who don't recognize it as both new and contradictory, are quoting it as if it is some sort of obvious truth that's 'always been that way.'
From your standpoint I can see why you are championing this position. From where I sit I think of it more like a 'sky is blue' detail that while always true wasn't listed for some reason (most likely in my mind is 'duh, it's obvious').
...while stitched together piles of corpses, animated by an enslaved sentient creature, and prone to going on murderous killing sprees, was *not* evil.
I'm sure we can agree endlessly about how several things that are deservedly evil aren't marked as such.
...the designers of 3rd edition didn't think that mindless critters (or even Int 2 animals!) could make an ethical or moral choice.
In a world where there are absolute good and evil it's completely sensible that a creature could be good or evil beyond whatever mind or will they are capable of exerting.
Note also that the 3.5 Monster Manual, despite re-aligning skeletons as 'evil' explicitly says;
Quote:
"A skeleton only does what it is ordered to do. It can draw no conclusions of its own and takes no initiative."
Wow. Now there's stupidity that I'd slap a houserule on the second a prospective player asked (anyone who has played with me knows better). 'But it's not evil to animate dead, and they don't do anything when I lose control of them, so I can animate every corpse we come across and store the extras for later!'
I'm groaning at the thought of a necromancer (BBEG or not) opening crates and commanding new legions of skeletons as his current stock dwindle.
Actually, alignment is determined by popular opinion.
If you want to change it.
Ask your Dm.
The most simple arguement ever. :P
And yes. Skeletons. Fine fine punks.
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So does that mean that you accept that undeath is a sinister taint as presented in the sentence from the base rulebook and have no desire as to know why.
If so I totally had you pegged on the other side.
No, it means I accept that the writers were not consistent about the morality of negative energy and undeath. So they made undead Evil 'just because' and talk about negative energy causing the 'evils of undeath' without a clear reason for it.
We have the option of necromancy being Evil, but it is not explicitly held to because the designers want it as a PC option when they discourage Evil PCs. So a necromancer is a poor choice for a character.
Also, I wouldn't say I really have a side. I've argued for both in this thread as I recall. I'm just marginally more for undead being neutral or the creator having the option to make them whatever alignment he wants. Overall I'd just like consistency. And I love to argue.
So does that mean that you accept that undeath is a sinister taint as presented in the sentence from the base rulebook and have no desire as to know why.
If so I totally had you pegged on the other side.
No, it means I accept that the writers were not consistent about the morality of negative energy and undeath. So they made undead Evil 'just because' and talk about negative energy causing the 'evils of undeath' without a clear reason for it.
We have the option of necromancy being Evil, but it is not explicitly held to because the designers want it as a PC option when they discourage Evil PCs. So a necromancer is a poor choice for a character.
Also, I wouldn't say I really have a side. I've argued for both in this thread as I recall. I'm just marginally more for undead being neutral or the creator having the option to make them whatever alignment he wants. Overall I'd just like consistency. And I love to argue.
The alignment of the spell would, in my mind as a dm, be determined by the alignment of the intention. As well as the culture the player is in. If you raise the dead in a country were touching the undead is an unholy act, you can bet your arse its going to be an evil spell. Even if you yourself are using it for good, the others will view it as evil.
Course. Speaking about what is evil is probably the real arguement here.
And still after all this debate, I still don't see what the problem is of skeletons and zombies being evil or animating the dead being an evil act. The two defenses are: they're created with negative energy which is neutral, and they are mindless and are not capable of moral decision making. So?
Unholy weapons are evil.
The desecrate spell is evil.
A talisman of ultimate evil is evil.
A mace of blood is evil.
None of these have intelligence. All can be linked to the negative energy plane. A skeleton is animated with negative energy. Can it simply be that the use of negative energy to further one's goals is an abomination to the powers of good (deifically speaking)? There's a reason that a good aligned PC using an unholy weapon (even to defeat an evil foe) gains a negative level while doing so. There's a reason good aligned clerics can't cast desecrate. There's a reason a mace of blood can cause you to become chaotic evil. And there's a reason good clerics shouldn't try to cast animate dead… deities of good don't like it. So you're a neutrally aligned PC? Your particular deity may not be diametrically opposed to your use of the spell, but certain others certainly are, just as evil aligned deities probably applaud it. It's irrelevant how you use the spell. It's still evil:
– Good considers it evil and an abomination
– Neutral considers it evil, but may or may not care
– Evil considers it evil and likes it
Where are the writers screwing it up?
EDIT: In other words, a skeleton (with a sword) is SORT OF like a +1 unholy sword with the dancing property, if you get my meaning.
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I've lurked amongst this thread since the beginning, reading posts that angered or amused me greatly.
I'm no debater. Speaking in public forums has never been my cup of tea. But I feel that in this day and age, the very concept of morality, that very line of what is right or wrong has been blurred almost beyond repair. We're surrounded by shades of gray. And it manifests itself in the games we play.
D&D has always been, first and foremost, about good vs. evil. Its been that way from the very beginning of the game. The players are supposed to be heroes. All the heroes I've ever read about strive to do the right thing time and time again against their worst natures. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't. But it is in them to do just that. If it weren't, then they wouldn't be heroes.
Putting heroes in untenable situations (such as the village example given in a previous post to see if they use the Animate Dead scroll [that from all I can see, seems to be the only option left to them]) is not a true test of heroism. That is, in my opinion, a "dick" move. Life has too many examples of this very thing going on in it all the time. I play the game to get away from that sort of thing. I'd rather evacuate the village and die fighting while covering their retreat than use the scroll. But that's just me.
Whether I play or GM, it's always with these very things in mind. What makes a hero? Does using an evil spell with good intentions make one a hero? No. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. What will be the consequences of said act once I do it beyond the immediate gain? If I'm so willing to take the "short cut" this time, then what about the next time? And the time after that?
I say all of that to say this: animate dead is an evil spell. It is not just a simple utility spell, like mage hand. It is an evil spell that carries very real (in game) consequences for its use. The goodly folk at large within the game will not think highly of your actions. You'll be shunned in one form or another (whether by outright avoidance, denying you any form of assistance, or chasing you out of town). Your foes will (and should) think less of you as well, because you've proven that you're no different than they are. And if you're no different than they are, then why are you adventuring in the first place?
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Actually the side that would like consistency is what I meant as opposed to siding with any preferred alignment.
Aha, my mistake. Yes, that would be my stance. I'm fine with negative energy being evil and making undead evil, or negative energy being neutral and letting the necromancer decide what alignment his creations are. I just want it stuck with. I'm even fine with the middle ground of 'the necromantic rites make the undead evil but the negative energy powering it isn't.'
I've lurked amongst this thread since the beginning, reading posts that angered or amused me greatly.
I'm no debater. Speaking in public forums has never been my cup of tea. But I feel that in this day and age, the very concept of morality, that very line of what is right or wrong has been blurred almost beyond repair. We're surrounded by shades of gray. And it manifests itself in the games we play.
D&D has always been, first and foremost, about good vs. evil. Its been that way from the very beginning of the game. The players are supposed to be heroes. All the heroes I've ever read about strive to do the right thing time and time again against their worst natures. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't. But it is in them to do just that. If it weren't, then they wouldn't be heroes.
No. From what I understand D&D first edition only had the alignments Lawful Neutral and Chaotic. Correct me if I am wrong. If the only fiction you read is about goody two-shoes you are missing out on some of the greats. Vance, Howard, Leiber, Moorcock. The fiction which inspired the original creators of the game. The characters in A Song of Ice and Fire try to do what is "right" but that is almost never what is "good".
I say all of that to say this: animate dead is an evil spell. It is not just a simple utility spell, like mage hand. It is an evil spell that carries very real (in game) consequences for its use. The goodly folk at large within the game will not think highly of your actions. You'll be shunned in one form or another...
I will not dispute that animate dead is an evil spell. I will dispute whether mindless undead are inherently evil. Since we went through, as has been said, 28 years of the game without that being true and the change only made for mechanical purposes (Paladin smite) I see no reason it should be adhered to now.
I think that the interpretation of a pantheistic world in terms of black and white or right and wrong is where things get mixed up. Let's face it the ends do justify the means, otherwise there would be no good Gods of War(If you draw this phrase from its coiner). Because War begets pain, evil, death, deception, treason. But there is a good God of War.
I think no clerical spells or spells in general should be inherently good or evil. That should be the DMs call. Besides in a pantheistic society, a good God of Protection and Defense of the innocent may be very angry at their vessel if they DON'T cast that spell, when casting it could have saved innocent lives. Who knows a good God of Justice, or Poetic Justice may exalt and boon a vessel that raised enemy dead to fight their old comrades in order to save the innocent.
The whole concept of a pantheistic world is subjective. Whether what a character does is considered good or evil, right or wrong is not objective but very SUBJECTIVE to their deities wishes and goals.
Check out this line from Frank and K's oft-quoted Tome of Necromancy:As far as I can tell this is some kind of homebrew material, and I've only seen you quote it. Surely it's an example of the notion, but if I scour the web I can find molemen conspiracy theories as well.
If you'd actually read this entire thread, you would have seen others aside from me quote it, and in fact you would have seen one of the authors, K, here commenting on their contribution.
As for the "homebrew" stuff, the major portion of the Tome of Necromancy that people are quoting is the essay that shows the various inconsistencies in how necromancy is dealt with in D&D, including the subject of this thread "Animate Dead is evil? Why?"
I point to the Tome of Necromancy because it's a quick discussion of the problems in the RAW and the decisions a DM has to make if he wants to present a consistent world.
...no matter how evil you say the negative material plane is now it still has neutral creatures wandering around it.By that logic Warforged, Crusaders, Swordsages, and Warblades are running around the material plane.
In many people's games, they are, and I think you'd have to look pretty hard to find a Pathfinder game where the DM hasn't allowed one feat or prestige class or monster or whatever from a 3.5 or 3.0 source. Hell, I use conversions from 1st edition in mine.
If you want to be a Pathfinder purist, OTOH, all I think you have is half a line in the main book describing the Negative Material Plane and you have to make it up as you go what is meant by "from which the sinister taint of undeath hails."
Which means we're back to the Tome of Necromancy and choosing between "The Crawling Darkness" and the "Playing with Fire" options. I prefer "playing with fire" for my own games, and I think it makes the nation of Geb in the Pathfinder setting make more sense since it has a nation with zombie labor harvesting food for export. If the negative material plane is only a source of malicious Eeevil, it should be impossible to get a skeleton to harvest a wheat field for you, since the Crawling Darkness has only downloaded the "attack with sword" animation program and steadfastly refuses to give you a "harvest grain" upgrade you want. No matter how much your necromancer Simon LaGris clone cracks his whip, you zombie work force won't pick any cotton. Eeeevil doesn't give a damn about cotton seeds. It wants warm flesh and living blood and BRaiaiAinS! Cotton seeds? What in the hell are those? Okay, yes, you can argue that seeds contain life and you can get the zombies to hate life so much that they will pull the living seeds out of the dead cotton plants to extinguish every bit of the hated life force, but if you do that, every adventurer with an ounce of brains in their head is going to be able to stop the ravening zombie hordes with a handful of poppy seeds.
Honestly, look at the Zombie listing in the Pathfinder Bestiary and then square that with the zombie-harvested produce exported by the nation of Geb to the nation of Nex in the Geb and Nex sections of the Pathfinder setting book. It does say that zombies are "capable of following orders" but it's up a DM what that means. But obviously, if they're able to actually harvest produce, their intelligence is somewhat better than "mindless."
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In many people's games, they are...
And strangely enough in pathfinder they (to my knowledge) don't exist.
Which means we're back to the Tome of Necromancy...
Why? Are some guy's house rules are better than anyone else's?
Geb makes perfect sense as the undead are controlled.
If harvesting food requires something above what PF calls mindless (which includes vermin that somehow sustain and populate themselves without outside influence), then by that note golems and animated objects are also above mindlessness.
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Actually the side that would like consistency is what I meant as opposed to siding with any preferred alignment.Aha, my mistake. Yes, that would be my stance. I'm fine with negative energy being evil and making undead evil, or negative energy being neutral and letting the necromancer decide what alignment his creations are. I just want it stuck with.
Ditto. I also prize a consistent approach that doesn't create more problems than it solves, over any 'side.'
I have, *several times,* offered thoughts on how to craft a game setting where negative energy is always evil, and positive energy is always good, and evil clerics can't bring positive energy into the world via curing spells, because it's the matter to their anti-matter, just as good clerics would be unable to not only animate dead, but to inflict wounds with negative energy.
But the people who argue for the always-evil-undead seem utterly unwilling to even *discuss* making the mechanical game changes that would support a setting where negative energy is evil and positive energy is good, let alone do the work that would be required.
And if they don't care enough to even think about their position, let alone realize it, I don't see why I should do the work for them.
I'm fine with the way it worked for the 28 years before 3.5, after all, and the only 'work' my position needs is to scratch an 'evil' off of the alignment line under the skeleton and zombie entries, restoring the game to the internally consistent portrayal of positive and negative energy it enjoyed before that change.
Less work for me. It always made sense before, and it wasn't broken.
The 3.5 update made it *less sensible,* and Occam's Razor suggests that I reverse the 3.5 update, not rewrite how the positive and negative energy planes, and their inhabitants, and good and evil clerics, and mindless undead, and creatures with nonabilities, and the rules for alignment, function.
Ditto. I also prize a consistent approach that doesn't create more problems than it solves, over any 'side.'
I have, *several times,* offered thoughts on how to craft a game setting where negative energy is always evil, and positive energy is always good, and evil clerics can't bring positive energy into the world via curing spells, because it's the matter to their anti-matter, just as good clerics would be unable to not only animate dead, but to inflict wounds with negative energy.
But the people who argue for the always-evil-undead seem utterly unwilling to even *discuss* making the mechanical game changes that would support a setting where negative energy is evil and positive energy is good, let alone do the work that would be required.
And if they don't care enough to even think about their position, let alone realize it, I don't see why I should do the work for them.
I'm fine with the way it worked for the 28 years before 3.5, after all, and the only 'work' my position needs is to scratch an 'evil' off of the alignment line under the skeleton and zombie entries, restoring the game to the internally consistent portrayal of positive and negative energy it enjoyed before that change.
Less work for me. It always made sense before, and it wasn't broken.
The 3.5 update made it *less sensible,* and Occam's Razor suggests that I reverse the 3.5 update, not rewrite how the positive and negative energy planes, and their inhabitants, and good and evil clerics, and mindless undead, and creatures with nonabilities, and the rules for alignment, function.
Very much in agreement here.
I also think zombie/skeleton labor becomes far less economically feasible if they wander off to remake a Romero flick whenever their necromantic overseer has a heart attack or is otherwise unavailable. Liability insurance must be truly horrific in Geb, or else farms need to be walled, moated or magically warded to keep the zombies/skeletons coralled whenever the necromancer wants to take a vacation. Multiple castings of unseen servant seem far more efficient in economic terms even if you don't have the PR problems of marketing zombie-picked fruit.
What happens when a skeleton is brought to unlife with the spell animate dead in regards to the deceased creature's soul? Does it remain somewhere in the outer planes? Or is it suddenly wrenched back into the body somehow through the spell's magic?
I see a fundamental difference between using animate dead on a corpse and using animate object on it.
Animate dead does nothing to the soul that inhabited the corpse. All it does it make that corpse unviable for raise dead or reincarnation. If anything, it severs the final connection between the body and soul. It cannot affect the soul in any other way.
In fact, the body to be animated doesn't even have to ever been in possession of a soul for it to be animated, as would be the case with a necromancer animating a spare Clone he's decided he doesn't want/need, and it would possibly also work with the product of Fabricate (stone statue) followed by Flesh to Stone.
And then there's the undead produced by a Robe of Bones which does not require actual corpses for its manufacture.
Thanks TOZ.
So how can a soulless corpse given a state of life, be neutral if it defies the entire cycle of life and death?
The building blocks of the material plane are the elemental planes and the energy planes. All are neutrally aligned. The positive is the beginning source of life, the negative the end of life, with the elementals the building blocks. All makes sense so far.
So now you have a spell that funnels energy from the end of life source (i.e. negative energy) to create an unliving creature that defies the entire life/death cycle which in turn was presumably set up by higher power. The entire act itself creates an abominable act that has created an abomination as a result. It's a creature that without interference, cannot actually die. The fact that negative energy merely happens to be one of the main ingredients to bring about such a phenomenon is beside the point. True, the creature has no soul, no intelligence, but still is in effect alive – or a mockery of life – that rejects the order of things in the universe. It doesn't matter that it can't think on its own. It still has mental stats of Charisma and Wisdom, so it must have sentience on some level.
Again I say, there is a fundamental difference between animating dead on a corpse vs. animating object on a corpse.
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You make a good point. Why does it not extend to an animated object? Why does it not extend to golems? After all, those are animated by captured elemental spirits, bound into an unnatural service. The golem has as much sentience as a skeleton does. Does the material used make that much of a difference? If so, what about the flesh golem?