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?
Because due to social conventions, dancing skeletons are perceived to be creepy whereas dancing teapots are perceived as cute. But from a strict standpoint of unnaturalness, a collection of bones which were once able to dance and are still articulated for dancing are somewhat less unnatural than a lump of glazed heat-treated clay that isn't even made in the form of a creature capable of dance.
And the "unnatural" conversation really needs to be brought up the next time a druid casts Animate Plants and the maple trees start uprooting themselves and sashaying across the landscape.
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Anyone remember Mummies being linked to the positive energy plane instead of the negative energy plane like most undead?
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?
Maybe you should rather consider what it is that makes skeletons and zombies undead rather than constructs. Just some thoughts on the matter, feel free to tune in because I am interested in other people's view on these.
Animated object I can see as something completely artificial in intelligence, it is given a semblance of life by magic, much like a robot of sorts. basically not evil.. though animating corpses this way might still be disrespectful or distasteful.
Golem basically this seems to blur the line between construct and living a bit, an elemental spirit is put inside a receptacle to animate it, which is basically the same as what an earth elemental does when it manifests on it's own, except this is created to contain the spirit and is only allowed to supply the animating force, the intelligence is wholy artificial in nature there. Something like putting a hamster inside a wheel to make a machine run. A bit cruel maybe, this might or might not be evil depending on your perspective.
skeletons and zombies seemingly creates 'unlife' with the mental capacity of a giant cockroach from anything that was once living, it seems to have some traits reminiscient of the old creature, but isn't quite the old creature. Essentially you might have created a living creature, without soul, purpose or motivation except to serve you, when it dies / is destroyed it's excistence ends with no afterlife to go to.
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Which means we're back to the Tome of Necromancy...Why? Are some guy's house rules are better than anyone else's?
Presumably some people do better house rules than others, but the point of quoting the Tome of Necromancy is that the authors thought about the subject, concluded that the current position was inconsistent, and came up with a couple of other possible models that they felt made more sense.
The D&D / Pathfinder position is that some things are Evil by definition, animate dead is one of them, and we see no reason to justify it. Possibly because it was felt to be obvious. Despite the following :-
It is very easy to see how animate dead can be used in an evil manner. However, that isn't a reason to make it an Evil spell. (If you stop and think about what cloudkill actually does, its hard to see how casting it is anything other than an evil act, but it isn't an Evil spell.)
Animate Dead creates evil creatures - but it didn't in 3.0 and it was still (I believe) an Evil spell. And if someone developed a spell to create good zombies, possibly using positive energy, would that be a Good spell?
Animate Dead uses negative energy. So do inflict spells, but they aren't Evil. False Life "harnesses the power of unlife" and (unlike animate dead) the target is a living creature, but it isn't Evil.
I do not think negative energy in itself is evil, but apparently it isn't capable to create life as we know it.. indiscrimnatingly creating tortured creatures with no true place in the world. A bit like willingly birthing disformed / retarded children, if part of 'good' is respect for life, creating undead isn't. not because they are close to being constructs, but because they are close to being true living creatures, just a debased and twisted form of life.
I do not think negative energy in itself is evil, but apparently it isn't capable to create life as we know it.. indiscrimnatingly creating tortured creatures with no true place in the world. A bit like willingly birthing disformed / retarded children, if part of 'good' is respect for life, creating undead isn't. not because they are close to being constructs, but because they are close to being true living creatures, just a debased and twisted form of life.
Humans are all about creating debased and twisted forms of life. We do it all the time.
Let's breed horses with donkeys to get infertile hybrids called mules.
Let's breed sheep with so much fat in their tails that you have to have some one physically hold the tail aside to the sheep can procreate. Let's do the same thing with turkeys and their breasts.
Hell, lets castrate roosters to make capons, bulls to make oxen, and stallions to make geldings. Hell, we even can do with our fellow men to make eunuchs.
That all said, these things also naturally arise via accident and the natural processes of nature. Ants farm aphids. Human farm sheep. It's a process called symbiosis. And the function of hormones and what happens when they're disrupted is also part of the natural process.
Since undead can spontaneously arise without the intervention of a chanting necromancer, all the necromancer is providing an artificial catalyst for a natural or at least supernatural process.
From the standpoint of natural philosophy, undead are akin to locusts. Regular grasshoppers generally do not become locusts unless there is the right combination of circumstances in which case they do. Likewise, most living people who die do not become undead unless there are special circumstances.
Undead are like locusts in that they're destructive and most people don't like them, but like locusts, they do have their uses.
I rather take the standpoint that undead should not appear 'naturally' but rather that they are created when nature fails.
It is viewed as an abomination in general and that is what makes it evil, I am not saying the alignment system is perfect, but giving the ok sign to things like this perverts the campaign, taking it a few steps further and you can debate wether demons are infact evil or just doing their job.
If the game says animating the dead is evil fine, at one hand you can argue that the alignment description leaves many open spaces to be filled out. This spells is clear on it being evil, you do not need an exact why, a line has to be drawn somewhere and everyone can see how it could at least be morally questionable.
Houserule it if nobody likes it, I like to keep undead as something dark and unholy so it works fine for me, which is infact the only real reason why I'd make up arguements why it could be considered evil.
In real life I do not believe in true evil, but hey it is a fantasy campaign afterall, we need something evil. what is evil.. well anything the 'Good' Powers that be dont like. Maybe it is evil just because paladins agree on it being nasty.
Feel free to get in the DM seat and figure out how alignment works in your campaign.
I'm not convinced an animated object is truly alive. The animating force itself that gives it a "semblance" of life does not come from any of the "building blocks" that make up life. And "semblance" doesn't necessarily mean "actual".
Golems are a different matter. I'm not sure how to explain them quite fully.
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...concluded that the current position was inconsistent...
All rules systems have some inconsistencies, that's why you take what makes sense to you and run with it.
It is very easy to see how animate dead can be used in an evil manner. However, that isn't a reason to make it an Evil spell.
The premise of AD being an evil spell is that the act of casting the spell is MFing evil, not a small evil like insulting someone's mom.
And if someone developed a spell to create good zombies, possibly using positive energy, would that be a Good spell?
There's something like this, only not evil. It's called raise dead. Also instead of 'good' mockeries of sacred life it's actual life and only if the soul agrees to return to the body.
False Life "harnesses the power of unlife" and (unlike animate dead) the target is a living creature, but it isn't Evil.
Actually the target is 'you' so at worst you're harming yourself. The spell doesn't make sense as a negative energy spell, but thankfully only the fluff makes reference to it having to do with unlife. It would be just as easy to refluff it into stating 'channeling life from the positive energy plane' as to redesign the spell to use negative energy.
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Since undead can spontaneously arise without the intervention of a chanting necromancer, all the necromancer is providing an artificial catalyst for a natural or at least supernatural process.
Limiting the undead to zombies and skeletons (the product of the AD spell), in what circumstances do they appear spontaneously? Do certain joyous events such as marriage (ok, maybe not joyous for the groom, but bear with me), or a feast spawn undead, or is more likely to be after a battle over a bit of land with resources?
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?
On further reflection, I don't see any evidence that an animated object is animated by a captured elemental spirit.
It's true that a golem has as much sentience as a skeleton. However, having sentience isn't proof that something's alive or a mockery of life. Intelligent weapons have more sentience than golems or skeletons. Yet they aren't alive. I'm not convinced it is bound into "unnatural" service… just service. I think that unless something is infused with energy from either the positive material plane, or the negative material plane, then they can't have life (or unlife).
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Since undead can spontaneously arise without the intervention of a chanting necromancer, all the necromancer is providing an artificial catalyst for a natural or at least supernatural process.Limiting the undead to zombies and skeletons (the product of the AD spell), in what circumstances do they appear spontaneously? Do certain joyous events such as marriage (ok, maybe not joyous for the groom, but bear with me), or a feast spawn undead, or is more likely to be after a battle over a bit of land with resources?
Now it's a Chronicles product, not a core RPG product, but in Golarion, undead can 'naturally' arise as a result of an action happen.
However, skeletons and zombies have also been known to arise spontaneously, usually as a result of another powerful undead creature nearby. Certain areas with a strong necromantic aura or a history of killing—such as battlefields and long-forgotten sacrificial altars—or places where a significant number of people have died violently, as
with a mass grave or the sites of massacre, can spontaneously
produce the living dead as well.
ooh, creepy thought
Since undead can spontaneously arise without the intervention of a chanting necromancer, all the necromancer is providing an artificial catalyst for a natural or at least supernatural process.Limiting the undead to zombies and skeletons (the product of the AD spell), in what circumstances do they appear spontaneously? Do certain joyous events such as marriage (ok, maybe not joyous for the groom, but bear with me), or a feast spawn undead, or is more likely to be after a battle over a bit of land with resources?
There's the whole "phantom bride" motif, so yes, marriages have an awful lot to do with undead. Female phantoms, if they're wearing anything in particular, tend to be wearing wedding gowns. Probably the most famous is the shade of Orpheus's wife, Eurydice, who was bitten by a serpent at the feast after their wedding. Worse Wedding Reception Ever, granted, but it still satisfies your requirements of "marriage" and "feast." And the "vampire groom" motif is so popular that vampires often start becoming polygamous, taking multiple brides. I mean, a vampire who wants to make your daughter into a vampire but isn't planning to marry her? What a cad!
Now, "joyous" maybe not so much, but are locusts joyous? Look, kids! The locusts are back! Still undeniably a natural occurrence. Maybe not a fun one, but still, something that happens with predictable certitude under the right conditions.
Oh, wait, you want just zombie brides and skeleton grooms. Well, skeleton brides and grooms are a regular part of Dia De Los Muertos decorations. Zombies? Well, if you need them to be mindless shambling corpses, you're talking more 19th-20th century American folklore, in which case intervention of a bokor is generally required, though if you want to go with film, "Zombie Honeymoon" is fun, and "My Boyfriend's Back" also has a spontaneously arising zombie, though admittedly an intelligent one (or at least the level of intelligence required for a teen comedy, so if "mindless entertainment" counts, then he is mindless too).
I do know that in Haiti they put concrete slabs on the graves to keep zombies from crawling out spontaneously, so a bokor is not needed necessarily, though I can't point to a specific story apart from this custom.
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I love alignment threads. They're like philosphical disucssions, but worse, because people think they're in the clear to make assertions about morality and claim they're (correctly) interpreting the rules.
I'm happy Animate Dead is evil, and I don't particularly care why. The last thing I want in my game is some crazy ass zombie slaves campaign where undead are used as forced labor. I spend enough time ignoring questions of why magic isn't integrated into society without adding more to the mix. I'm personally annoyed that such an option even exists - I prefer my zombies more Romero-esque. Even if they are slow and not that dangerous individually, they are not controllable (or, at least not for very long).
Plus, it's nice to have evil foes to destroy other than devils/demons. Undead fit that role rather nicely.
I'm not inflexible on that. There's always room for a good ghost or other type creature - they're definitely a staple of fiction. But, I also think those types of stories aren't really D&D's forte to begin with, so having them be the exception, rather than part of the rule, is also fine by me.
In any event, just ignore the [Evil] descriptor if it doesn't fit your conception of undead. There isn't a right answer on the best way to handle the issue, and pretensions to the contrary are just that.
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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?
As already mentioned above, no effect to the soul whatsoever.
Soul Bind, Trap the Soul and Magic Jar can affect the soul. (And perhaps Wish, Miracle and Limited Wish, if worded to do so.)
If Animate Dead put a person's soul back in their rotting meat, the corpse would no longer be mindless, because souls have sentience, and the Int/Wis/Cha scores of their previous existence (see Magic Jar for specifics, although one could also look at the Petitioners that represent the final state of 'souls' in earlier editions).
If Animate Dead placed a persons soul back in their bones, the corpse would also have the alignment of the soul. A Paladins soul does not 'turn evil' because someone cast Animate Dead. The Paladin is not ripped out of Iomedae's grace, just because his corpse had been dug up and is now being used to kill people (or, more commonly, to turn a grindwheel, since human corpses are a breathtaking waste of onyx to animate for combat use). Unless Iomedae calls him over and says, 'Hey, some jerk just animated your corpse,' the dead Paladin has no reason to even *know* that someone cast animate dead, many dimensions away, just as he would have no clue that the cleric he was friends with in life cast Speak With Dead after he died to find out what he wanted done with his gear. The 'echo of his spirit' told the Cleric that he wanted it donated to his temple, so that a new Paladin might benefit from his gear, but he would remain blissfully unaware, since even a spell designed specifically to chat with a dead person *doesn't contact the soul.*
In a world where the Animate Dead spell is more powerful than the gods themselves, and can rip souls out of heaven (or hell), necromancers would be smote dead before they made it out of apprentice levels. The only exceptions would be necromancers in service to the gods of evil, since they would be *vital* to the war between evil and good gods, since they would have the amazing power to steal souls from the upper planes and deliver them to their masters in the lower planes.
Evil would win, and the heavens would be empty, as anyone's old bones could be dug up (even if they have to be restored with spells like mending, make whole or even re-assembled from dust with fabricate), so that they could be animated just long enough to tear their souls from the gods of good, and condemned screaming to the underworld.
The greatest relics of churches of good would be items that cast disintegrate and spheres of annhilation, since the only way a soul could be 'safe' is if not a single particle of it's body remained intact. Even then, the greatest powers of evil would use spells like limited wish or miracle to conjure forth the bodies of their foes, just to animate them and steal them from heaven. Evil 'crime scene investigators' would scour the haunts of champions of good, seeking out spilled blood, cast off hairs, cut fingernails, trimmings from daily shaving, etc. to save for use later, to magically fabricate a corpse for animation, so that they can steal that person's soul.
It might make for a bleak and fascinating setting, but it's not the D&D standard. The souls of the dead are pretty much off-limits. Once you've made it to heaven (or hell), you're safe (or stuck, as the case may be).
I get that a lot of people who've joined since 2003 like to assume that animate dead has some effect on souls, but that makes the game *far* bleaker than I care for.
I'm not a fan of 'zombie apocalypse' movies where the only truism is that the bad-guys have already won, and the 'game' is just seeing how long it is before the last few good-guys get eaten. Futility doesn't exactly blow up my skirt.
I don't mind if my character *doesn't* 'win,' but I have zero interest in a setting where he *can't* win, because the bad-guys already have the deck stacked so far in their favor that they can't lose.
Fortunately, D&D has never been about that. Even in bleaker settings like Athas or Ravenloft, where the deck *was* stacked in favor of Team Evil, you might be able to escape, or even overthrow / defeat a Darklord or Dragon King.
I see a fundamental difference between using animate dead on a corpse and using animate object on it.
They are fundementally different.
Animate Dead uses non-aligned mindless negative energy.
Animate Object uses non-aligned mindless positive energy.
A golem uses non-aligned and questionably mindless elemental *creatures.*
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False Life "harnesses the power of unlife" and (unlike animate dead) the target is a living creature, but it isn't Evil.Actually the target is 'you' so at worst you're harming yourself. The spell doesn't make sense as a negative energy spell,
And that sort of thing just fuels the conversation.
False Life should probably involve positive energy.
Remove Disease (which *kills living organisms*) should be negative energy.
Contagion (which *creates living organisms*) should be positive energy.
But 'negative energy' isn't always anti-life and inherently antithetical to life-force or living things. Sometimes it's a *buff* that strengthens and increases 'life-force.' Sometimes it *creates life.*
But only 'icky' life, 'cause apparently 'icky' trumps 'anti-life.'
Ugh.
And fear spells. Really? How is this 'anti-life?' What, do they kill brain cells? Fear spells should be enchantment spells...
Near the top of my list of pet peeves about the whole concept of Schools is that Transmutation, Conjuration, Enchantment, etc. are schools of *effect,* while Illusion and Necromancy are *theme schools,* made up of a hodge-podge of conjurations, transmutations and evocations that are 'macabre' or 'colorful.' (2nd editions Spells & Power, with it's 'schools of affect' and stuff had some neat insights here...)
I conjure demons made of pure Evil. Conjuration. I conjure angels made of pure Good. Conjuration. I conjure elemental fire / air / water / earth genies. Conjuration. I conjure chaotic frog-people. Conjuration. I conjure lawful construct-people. Conjuration. I conjure positive energy. Still Conjuration. I conjure negative energy. Conjur... omancy! I conjure shadow energy. Conjur... lusion! /eye roll
*If* Necromancy spells are to be 'Team Evil' spells, and unsuitable for PC use, they should be removed from the Players Handbook, and only available as Incantations or True Rituals or whatever.
It's just crappy game design to put something in the Players Handbook and then say, 'Oh, but your character may or may not become an unplayable NPC if you cast this spell an unspecified amount of times. Consult your DM for details.'
I have no problem with the Pathfinder core setting being more intrinsically Ravenlofty than my personal worlds. Having the Crawling Darkness possess skeletons/zombies as its favorite puppets is fine. In Ravenloft, it possessed everything that wasn't nailed down, including your familiar, so limiting it to skeletons/zombies in Pathfinder is comparatively reasonable.
What is not reasonable is having nobody notice. Wizards are inherently geeky mages and volumes would be written trying to figure out why a corpse animated with Animate Dead craves the flesh of the living when uncontrolled, one turned into a flesh golem will wander around and be reasonably placid except for occasional berserk rages, and one animated with Animate Object just sits there like a bump on a log unless given specific instructions. Why is this? Does a zombie crave the flesh of babies appreciably more than a bucket of live shrimp? What about vermin? Will animated skeletons exterminate every spider, cockroach, earwig and even flea if left in a crypt with nothing better to do?
Let's do an experiment: Drop a flea-infested cat down a chute into a skeleton's crypt. Watch on the magic mirror to see the skeleton kill the cat, then watch to see what it does when the fleas hop off the kitty corpse. Does it ignore them? Curious. Is it size or just species. Mice and large scarabs are about the same size. Drop a few of each down the chute together and see which of them the skeleton goes after. Take notes, pupils. This will be on your final necromancy exam!
Bonus points: Skeletons generally seem to ignore vegetation, but drop a potted palm down the chute after having a friendly druid cast Animate Plant. Observe the behavior of the skeleton as the palm tree prances around the crypt. (If you're not able to gain the services of a druid you may do something similar via Animate Rope with a rope or sending down an Unseen Servant with a feather duster and instructions to dust the crypt.)
The fundamental reason why Animate Dead is considered "evil" is because if the mage controlling the undead is slain, then these Mindless Undead tend to be prone to attacking and killing anything living that wanders across their paths indiscrimminately.
The energy that animates undead is Negative Energy, which while not inherently "evil" in itself, it is the antithesis of life energy (positive energy) itself and it has no place whatsoever in the world of the living. Its brought to the material plane by magical means, and the creatures it empowers (Ghouls, Zombies, Spectres, etc) tend to display a hatred of living creatures in general.
While a Neutral Necromancer could animate Zombies and Skeletons to fight other foul foes and thus serve a greater purpose...what happens when the mage is slain...his `pets` will likely attack the mages party members as well as their enemies (unless the foes were undead, in which cases they`d likely ignore the undead foes and together with the mages undead foes they all turn on the party).
Undead have in themselves no instinctive capacity for good, they if left to their own devices they will wander and attack anything living that crosses their paths. There are very few exceptions (such as Baelnorns from Myth Drannor and so forth, but even then these creatures are still all empowered by a malign life-snuffing negative energy)
Where do you think the average skeleton and zombie you encounter come from...some may rise `spontaneously` from sites saturated by large amounts of negative energy, the majority are formerly controlled `pets` summoned by possibly now dead Necromancers, or they are surplus to these Necromancers requirements in lieu of more powerful undead minions and have been discarded and are no longer controlled.
Its a perfectly valid tactic for players to use....but it depends on the party makeup. Evil parties and characters will seldom ever mind having Undead Meatbags around to absorb some hits, Neutral groups and characters will likely judge it based on its effectiveness rather than what it is, if it prooves to be dangerous for them they might object and Good groups and characters might be persuaded to ignore the rotting corpse of some former enemy thats now fighting on their side or the animated remains of some (now desecrated) innocent villager but Good Clerics, Paladins and certain other characters are very well within their grounds to object to having animated dead around since they more than any other character know that if uncontrolled, these unholy abominations will wander the countryside and attack indiscrimminately.
Not to mention that an enemy evil cleric can take control of your pets and turn them against you and your companions which is something that would never be far from the minds of the party.
While it is true that a mindless Skeleton or Zombie might ignore a flea, most mindless undead tend to go after `concentrations` of living creatures or the largest creature it can get its hands on. A cow over a human for example, a cat over a mouse, etc. but it will still and should still go after other living creatures as soon as the `strongest` source of life energy in its vicinity is slain.
Animated Plants and Objects are an interesting point, since Objects in particular arent animated by living energy, and they arent really living, breathing things, these should be ignored unless said object attacked the undead, in which case it would respond in self-preservation and defend itself.
Plants on the other hand are living things, why undead dont attack these on sight must have some bearing on the nature of what it is to be undead. A ghoul for example has an inescapable craving for humanoid flesh, a vampire for humanoid blood etc. But thats not to say there isnt plant-specific undead out there (there are Necromentals in the Libra Mortis 3.5 Sourcebook, which are Elementals turned Undead who turn other elementals into Undead if they slay them while they have no spawn creating effect on us living creatures), you could have a Ghost Treant for example, but generally ùndead should be considered to be broken down into categories. Random generic plantlife can and does get snuffed out by negative energy (See HORRID WILTING) and is sustained largely by sunlight to grow (which is a form of positive energy). But it must be to do with the fact that to destroy plantlife is more difficult than a living creature, or the plants life energy is nowhere near as strong as a living, intelligent creature and thusly isnt attractive or perhaps doesnt even register to the creature.
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The fundamental reason why Animate Dead is considered "evil" is because if the mage controlling the undead is slain, then these Mindless Undead tend to be prone to attacking and killing anything living that wanders across their paths indiscrimminately.
And yet this is, for the most part, a made up rule, that only applies to a single type of undead (Pathfinder zombies) and has only been in existence since *last year.*
It was never part of the nature of skeletons or zombies throughout the first three editions of the game, and even when skeletons and zombies became evil in 3.5, *they still didn't do that* according to their write ups in the 3.5 Monster Manual (and the skeleton *explicitly* doesn't, according to the 3.5 text!).
Oh sure, you could find a dozen people strenuously insisting that this was the case on the WotC forums, but you could also find a dozen people who wanted to use some combination of Pazuzu and the Surrukh to make a 1st level Kobold infinitely powerful, and those latter people *were more factually correct* than the former (regardless of the self-admitted absurdity of their thought experiments).
Pathfinder is the first D&D game that *has* made this the case, but this 'seek and destroy the living' behavior is only described under zombies in the Pathfinder Bestiary.
Mindless skeletons, even in Pathfinder (barring some sort of errata to 'correct' this), remain the volition-free doorstops they've been for decades, incapable of behaving as you describe.
Sometimes change is good, necessary even, to prevent stagnation. Other times it is ill-conceived, and creates more problems than it solves.
The change to zombies into mindless ravening destroyers of all life *made last year* isn't adding an option to the game or expanding opportunities, since one could always have zombies that had been ordered to kill people.
It's *removing* options.
Adding options, IMO, is good. Cutting them off, particularly if they've been around for decades, for, essentially, *flavor reasons* (since it surely isn't a balance issue, zombies being such junk, mechanically) is not good.
If I started arguing that the plane of shadow is a twisted dark reflection of the material world (which, it kinda *is*), and that calling shadow energy into the material plane is unnatural and brings darkness, deception and otherworldly taint into the world (which, it kinda *does*) and that I wasn't going to allow PCs to do it without risking turning evil, I'd be on the exact same footing as the 'zombies eat human flesh' crowd.
I could similarly argue that, since the Elemental Plane of Fire is ruled by Efreeti who have enslaved the local Fire Elementals, that every time someone calls up a fire effect, they are using spells designed by ancient spellcasters to barter with evil slavers to steal the power of enslaved sentients. Ditto enslaved earth elementals being ordered around between Dao/Shaitan and wizards casting move earth or wall of stone or whatever. One little assumption, not stated in the book, like 'negative energy is evil' or 'fire spells use fire stolen from elemental slaves' and I can make a chunk of core rules unusable.
Or I could just say that *all* magic taps into unnatural otherworldly forces, and risks breaking down the seals that keep the Elder Gods off of the material plane. Every magic missile weakens the barriers between us and Cthulhu.
Does it have to be magic? Could I say that to make tanglefoot bags I have to boil down the bones of children to get the glue-like sustance? Is alchemical acid made from the salty tears of grieving widows? Is alchemist's fire made with the ashes of burnt puppies? How many miner's died getting the ore for that longsword? How toxic is the process to make that ink? Were five peasants eaten by crocodiles gathering the reeds for that papyrus? How many lives have been destroyed by the ale you're drinking?
Where do I draw the line at using my own preferences and bits of flavor to take away core options available in the Players Handbook / Pathfinder RPG? The above examples may seem absurd, nonsensical or 'straw-mannish,' but they are no more or less so than the assumption that necromancy / negative energy / undead are 'always evil life-devouring icky black stuff.'
Are Horns of Valhalla evil for summoning up dead people? What about that spell in Dwarves of Golarion that explicitly calls up the spirits of dead ancestors to fight for you? Evil, right, dragging them out of dwarf-heaven and forcing them to do your bidding, perhaps even forcing them to kill dwarves or kick puppies or spill beer (whichever of those a dwarf would necessarily consider most evil...)?
The fundamental reason why Animate Dead is considered "evil" is because if the mage controlling the undead is slain, then these Mindless Undead tend to be prone to attacking and killing anything living that wanders across their paths indiscrimminately.And yet this is, for the most part, a made up rule, that only applies to a single type of undead (Pathfinder zombies) and has only been in existence since *last year.*
It was never part of the nature of skeletons or zombies throughout the first three editions of the game, and even when skeletons and zombies became evil in 3.5, *they still didn't do that* according to their write ups in the 3.5 Monster Manual (and the skeleton *explicitly* doesn't, according to the 3.5 text!).
Oh sure, you could find a dozen people strenuously insisting that this was the case on the WotC forums, but you could also find a dozen people who wanted to use some combination of Pazuzu and the Surrukh to make a 1st level Kobold infinitely powerful, and those latter people *were more factually correct* than the former (regardless of the self-admitted absurdity of their thought experiments).
Pathfinder is the first D&D game that *has* made this the case, but this 'seek and destroy the living' behavior is only described under zombies in the Pathfinder Bestiary.
Mindless skeletons, even in Pathfinder (barring some sort of errata to 'correct' this), remain the volition-free doorstops they've been for decades, incapable of behaving as you describe.
Sometimes change is good, necessary even, to prevent stagnation. Other times it is ill-conceived, and creates more problems than it solves.
The change to zombies into mindless ravening destroyers of all life *made last year* isn't adding an option to the game or expanding opportunities, since one could always have zombies that had been ordered to kill people.
It's *removing* options.
Adding options, IMO, is good. Cutting them off, particularly if they've been around for decades, for,...
Actually, it outlines this in the 3.5 official D&D Undead Specific book ((LIBRA MORTIS)), about why Undead have a ingrained hatred toward living creatures and why some creatures such as Ghouls and Vampires require to eat or consume something from living creatures to sustain themselves.
That book was pretty much the undead specific authority on 3.5, it outlined and explained alot about what it means to be undead and its effect on your psyche if your a sentient undead. The effect of `being` undead inevitably drives the victim to commiting atrocious acts they`d never dream of if they were living, and the effect is frankly sanity damaging to the point the person is scarely anything like how they used to be, they can try and fight their nature but being undead means you live forever...so you will give into your instincts and cravings in the end especially if your a vampire, ghoul, etc.It even explains why some Undead have an aversion to sunlight, because it sustains and nurtures life and is infact a form of positive energy itself. Undead that dont have a weakness to sunlight dont prefer to travel during daytime because the daylight makes them uncomfortable on some physical level, it outlines this in the book.
The act of creating undead is frankly a defilement of a creatures shell, could YOU be impersonal about someone animating the body of a dead relative of yours...I doubt it. You`d be furious, and not to mention tampering with the mortal remains of living creature is immoral even if its for good purposes.
Why else do you think most civilisations in Pathfinder wouldnt tolerate undead wandering their streets...unless they have an unusual society of government, undead dont form part of regular society.
99.9% of Undead printed in ANY 3.5 books are all possessed of Evil alignment, the sole exception I can think of is Baelnorns from Myth Drannor and perhaps Necropolitans (But look at how the ritual to become one is performed...tortured and worse, how is that not evil).
All basic examples even in 3.5 of Undead all have a NE alignment at best, some have LE and others CE depending what kind of Undead it is. Even in 3.5, Skeletons and Zombies that are uncontrolled attack living creatures on sight...why...well can YOU talk to them...NO, are they able to be reasoned with...NO...you have to fight them to the death.
The act of animating an object or a plant isnt in itself evil, the unattended plant of object doesnt attack living people indiscrimminately but it might fight back in self defense. Notice that when you run into a mob of skeletons and zombies in a random encounter, you cant reason with them, its kill or be killed.
Now consider this mob happens upon some innocent travellers who dont have the ability to fight back, the undead wont show restraint, they`ll slaughter the people, children, even the horse or dogs as well if they have them. Most undead dont have to eat or drink, some do, but anyone who is `turned` into one of these diet-dependant undeads (a feature outlined in LIBRA MORTIS) has to make incrementally worsening WILL saves when faced with a source of their diet dependant meals they happen upon to NOT attack and consume them. Sooner or later they`ll fail their saves, and sooner than later they will rationalise to themselves that they will only take what they need and whatnot, and as soon as they start making excuses like that to justify giving into their unholy desires then they have slipped into the circle of Evil despite how they might try and act in other areas. The only good they could really do is put themselves out of their misery to spare us living folks from their predation which is without excuse.
Necropolitans are an interesting point, they are individuals but part of their own secret society. Have you read the process of how someone is turned into one...its horrific and torturous, its not some romantic vampiric lovebite, its drawn out, your fully aware of everything that happens to you and its maddeningly horrific. While the process may not make you textbook evil, the process to make you into one was bourne from evil practices designed to pervert the living into unlife. While they may not be textbook evil, they are still undead and still powered by negative energy, unable to eat, sleep, drink, and so forth and giving up all these things in lieu of what....sitting around forever, unchanging, your immortal and the whole process and unlife of being one of these guys is going to twist your mental state sooner or later, and soon you`ll justify doing things a living person would be horrified at.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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They are fundementally different.
Animate Dead uses non-aligned mindless negative energy.Animate Object uses non-aligned mindless positive energy.
A golem uses non-aligned and questionably mindless elemental *creatures.*
Where does it say Animate Objects uses positive energy? I can't find anything to indicate as such in the spell description or the creature description.
I'm with you. Slavery is evil. Animating and controlling a dead body is not.
jh
They are fundementally different.
Animate Dead uses non-aligned mindless negative energy.Animate Object uses non-aligned mindless positive energy.
A golem uses non-aligned and questionably mindless elemental *creatures.*
Where does it say Animate Objects uses positive energy? I can't find anything to indicate as such in the spell description or the creature description.
Read the description of the semi-obscure monster, the ravid, a creature from the positive material plane that uses its positive energy to cast animate object.
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could YOU be impersonal about someone animating the body of a dead relative of yours...
I don't have to think about such things. It's a fantasy game predicated on invading peoples homes, killing them and taking their stuff, and these actions somehow giving me ever-increasing super-powers. Real world morality has nothing to do with two-dimensional caricatures of Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil.
I'm not bringing real-life posters real-life families into it, because, in the really-real world, whether or not I occasionally play a necromancer in a fantasy game, I do have a few lines that I won't cross, and I consider sideways snipes about digging up and cutting up real world people's real world relatives to be *more offensive* than discussing the rules of an imaginary game system where one can summon demons and trap souls in gems. (Not to mention non-core stuff like 'liquid pain' or 'sacrifices for power,' which I tend to avoid, not for ethical or moral reasons, but mostly because I don't think those sub-systems balance well.)
In short, it ain't real.
Is there a 'Mazes & Monsters' line here, where fantasy and reality blur, and concepts that are 'too monstrous' in the real world should be not be considered as topics to address in the fantasy game? Should we get rid of demon-summoning? Should we get rid of enchantment / compulsion spells, because of the ruhypnol / date rape implications? Should we get rid of the Scarlet Brotherhood / Red Wizards of Thay / Chelaxians because they are racists and / or otherwise reminiscent of Nazis?
Should we switch to another game, one that avoids any presentations of controversial or uncomfortable real-world issues, so that our real world sensibilities are properly protected from all the ugliness that creeps into D&D? (Which brings this conversation towards the 'Ethics of Slavery in D&D' thread, which skirts around the same topic, of what exactly what sort of 'evil' is too unconscionable to stomach in our fantasy settings.) It's a valid sub-topic, as the aforementioned ethics of slavery thread indicates. Not too terribly long ago, TSR ditched the words 'demon' and 'devil' and the term 'nine hells,' to replace them with Tanari and Baatezu and Baator for reasons related to real-world offense to fantasy world conventions. Perhaps the never-ending nature of this discussion about necromancy being 'beyond the pale' indicates that TSR missed the hot topics that are even more sensitive than 'demons' or 'devils,' such as corpses, souls, slavery, etc.
Again, I'm all about adding options. You quote upthread something about mindless undead wandering off to kill people if left unattended from Libris Mortis, IIRC, in direct contradiction to the core 3.5 skeleton description, which explicitly states that they cannot show initiative or take any action that they have not been specifically instructed to by their creator / master.
Libris Mortis is non-core and supplemental, and even if Core didn't trump supplement, it's counter to the purpose of a 'supplement' to *take away options.* Any supplement can *add* to the game (and, indeed, that's what a supplement is supposed to do, *add* options).
I can pick up Libris Mortis, as a player or DM, and find many options to *add* to my game, including spells, feats, prestige classes, etc. and I can use stuff like the new monsters or the undead monster class levels as a DM to do some cool stuff, like have a 1st level party encounter and have to deal with some 'ghouls' who haven't yet fully transitioned, by giving some humans a single level in the 'Ghoul monster class,' and therefore create some memorable foes for a party that would normally be unable to deal with full-strength Ghouls. All of this *adds* to my list of options, as PC or GM, and I can pick and choose (as GM) which of these options I wish to play with.
Other items in Libris Mortis, such as the section on diet-dependent and inescapably-hungering undead, *removes* options. Without these new supplemental rules, I could have the party open a crypt and find a dozen ghouls, emaciated and desperate for man-flesh, having been trapped there with nothing to eat for centuries. If I do choose to use these new supplemental rules, that option, previously there in every version of the game, is stripped away from me, as the diet-dependent ghouls would be immobile and insensate within a matter of days or months, just withered bodies that the party could kill with impunity.
That, IMO, is a *bad* supplemental rule, because it takes away options.
Mindless undead can always be *ordered* to run around and kill stuff, giving the GM the *option* to use them that way. Mindless undead that *always* attack living creatures, perhaps even bugs and plants, since nobody has ever cared enough about this new invention to specify otherwise, take away options that settings and scenarios have been using for decades (most memorably, the city of Hollowfaust, whose living citizens are guarded by the bones of their ancestors, but also including Geb, where zombies and skeletons are said to work the fields, growing produce to sustain the living population, despite their relentless malevolent loathing for life, and, presumably, every couple of years, a plantation owner has a heart attack or slips and knocks himself out getting out the tub, and his farm is destroyed by his out-of-control undead, tearing up crops, butchering animals and tearing the farmer's family to bits because they are all seething with hatred for all life and resent being forced to grow living things to help sustain the lives of other living things...).
But the chapter on Geb is strangely silent on these inevitable and probably very common incidents, where the kingdom has to deal with regular food shortages, massacres of the living and 'workers revolts' by the ungrateful striking zombies of Farmhands Local 101.
While I'm quoting you, Princess of Canada, and dismissing (some of) your arguments, I'm not dismissing *your position.* As I mentioned above, the Ethics of Slavery discussion, along with this one, tie together into the over-arching meta-discussion of whether or not RPGs should deal with controversial topics at all, or whether it is disrepectful or inappropriate for a 'mature' or uncomfortable topic to be addressed in the pages of a game (or comic book, or television show, or video game, or similar entertainment venue).
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I'm with you.
Dude, we all saw you riding through town, casting finger of death at random people on the street. Your opinion is rendered invalid by your wanton disrespect for life! :)
Edit: Wow, I can't believe that 'Emirikol the chaotic' picture isn't easier to find on teh intartubes. It's such a classic!
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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Read the description of the semi-obscure monster, the ravid, a creature from the positive material plane that uses its positive energy to cast animate object.
I can see the idea behind that, but I'm not entirely convinced.
The Ravid uses positive energy to bring objects to life with a (Su) ability. Mechanically, it functions the same as Animate Objects, but it is not Animate Objects. It's possible that spell casters learned how to animate objects by observing and mimicking the Ravid's abilities, but that's neither here nor there.
The point being, a creature using the energy of it's native environment to replicate a spell effect does not prove that the spell itself works the same way. There is, as they say, more than one way to skin a cat.
Of course, I'm only looking at the 3.x information, maybe the connection was more explicit in a previous edition?
The act of creating undead is frankly a defilement of a creatures shell, could YOU be impersonal about someone animating the body of a dead relative of yours...I doubt it. You`d be furious, and not to mention tampering with the mortal remains of living creature is immoral even if its for good purposes.
Why does everyone assume that the corpse I will be animating is someone's grandma from the local village or even human(or elf, dwarf, etc)? Most of the time, I'm going to be animating the corpse of some ogre or other evil, reviled creature that I have just heroically slain. None of the good people in town are going to care about what happens to its body. Some people may even see raising its corpse to be used in the service of good to be poetic justice of a sort. Most people will just be happy that the terrible ogre that has been murdering people is dead.
Read the description of the semi-obscure monster, the ravid, a creature from the positive material plane that uses its positive energy to cast animate object.
I can see the idea behind that, but I'm not entirely convinced.
The Ravid uses positive energy to bring objects to life with a (Su) ability. Mechanically, it functions the same as Animate Objects, but it is not Animate Objects. It's possible that spell casters learned how to animate objects by observing and mimicking the Ravid's abilities, but that's neither here nor there.
The point being, a creature using the energy of it's native environment to replicate a spell effect does not prove that the spell itself works the same way. There is, as they say, more than one way to skin a cat.
Of course, I'm only looking at the 3.x information, maybe the connection was more explicit in a previous edition?
Very possibly. Game writers very often use some of the same sources for their write-ups.
My contention is simply that it makes logical sense that if negative energy can be used as an animating force then positive energy--which is the actual source of life--should be able to do the same thing. And if you flavor negative energy with actual sentient evil, it makes sense to follow through and flavor positive energy with actual sentient good.
I'd also go as far as to let clerics and bards use both sources for Animate Objects so you can have a "good" teapot and an "evil" doll and let them wander around on the respective "good" and "evil" subroutines when they're not following direct orders.
Of course, I also like my positive and negative energy unflavored/unlinked with the good/evil dichotomy and would prefer that skeletons and zombies remain neutral unless specifically flavored with an alignment subroutine. Protection from Good/Evil/Law/Chaos would work nicely for that would let the evil druid create an evil willow tree to go off and strangle random halflings or an apple tree to throw apples at random girls skipping down the road in magic shoes looted from the dead.
I'm with Set in that I believe that more options are a good thing.
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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.
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 will do my best to remain civil in my response, so that if at any time it seems that I'm not, then understand that such is not my intent.
With that said...Lieber, Moorcock, Howard, Vance, Jordan and even Martin. These are names that I'm familiar with. I've read them at one time or another. If you wish to quote me, use the whole thing. Not just part of it to make your point. I also said that sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they don't. And that it is in them to be heroic. otherwise, they wouldn't be heroes. This applies to all the characters created by each author you've listed. Elric. Conan. Mouser and Fafhrd. Jon Snow. Rand al'Thor.
They strive (to some degree and sometimes without even realizing it) to be heroic. In order to be heroic, one must do heroic things. Sometimes the most heroic thing one can do is to struggle against your basest nature.
Like Kratos in GOW 3.
He is no better than those that he faces (indeed in many instances, he is far worse). There is almost nothing he will not do to accomplish his goal. Note that I said almost. Even Kratos has to have some form of redeemable quality. And he eventually proves that he does.
I do not just read only the goody-two-shoes stories, as you so quaintly put it. Just like I don't play only games that are kiddie in nature. I enjoy playing goodly characters, but am very capable of playing some of the most vile and despicable villains to have ever make way in the multiverse. I try to maintain a balance of dark and light. It just so happens that I prefer the light.
@Blayde. The point I was trying to make is two-fold. Heroism and virtue are not one and the same. All the characters named do heroic things, but those heroic things involve wanton slaughter, deception, betrayal, and losing one's own mind. Sometimes these characters struggle against some inner demons, and sometimes the evil, vicious things they do ARE their heroic acts. Furthermore, while the PF/D&D system has always been malleable enough to tell any type of story a DM/designer so chooses, I dislike the assumption that at its core D&D was always about good vs. evil. This is very much not so, and any close examination of the ethics of common actions taken in game comparative to real world morals and ethics shows a game virtually devoid of virtue.
At it's core D&D has absolute concepts of good and evil, players do not have to play with those concepts in mind and honestly I prefer non-absolute alignments. In absolute terms and for sake of game mechanics I see animate dead being an evil spell as a very logical decision even sofar as the skeletons being evil.
They might be mindless, but there still is some alien cunning, it is not intelligent by human standards since it doesnt have learning capacity.
If it is classified as undead it is not an automaton in my book and different ethics apply, why.. basically cause the game says so and it works for me. I do houserule alot of things I do not like, I do not think in a standard campaign it should be moraly justified to animate the dead though.
Its not only to do with morals, its FACT within Pathfinder few to little civilisations in the Pathfinder setting TOLERATE Undead.
Its a simple fact, Necromancer KNOWS he cant take his mob of skeletons and zombies into town...why?, because he'd have every cleric and paladin in the area after them backed up by an angry mob.
People can try and justify that animating the deceased remains for non-evil purposes however they wish, but the fact is, your animating a creatures remains and desecrating the corpse by doing so. Not to mention the fact that said body will be sent into battle and be likely destroyed (tantramount to desecrating/mutilating the remains yourself). I'd be VERY surprised if a Good alignment party would tolerate someone among them running around raising a mob of skeletons and zombies without asking WHERE the bodies came from (local village's cemetary, etc). Its not as simple as 'finding some laying around', theres every chance your going to have to get some dug up. In lieu of that, you go out and kill some monsters yourself and raise their remains. (Sure, the Orc's surviving family isnt going to curse your name because you turned their son/father/etc into a zombie mess that got destroyed five minutes later).
At the end of the day, unless your in a undead tolerant society (which 99% of the pathfinder campaign setting is NOT), it tells you how people percieve and relate to undead. I am sure any wandering undead would get destroyed if he villagers could muster enough burning torches and pitchforks, as would he errant necromancer making liberal use of the towns graveyard to 'replenish his forces'. Even if he didnt get the corpses from the graveyard, 99% of NPC's will not tolerate undead period. Its a simple fact.
And because undead are not accepted or allowed in most places, that tells you the practice of necromancy is an underground one, which in itself implies its either illegal (most likely), immoral (desecrating the remains of once living creatures) or downright evil (the vast majority of necromancers are infact evil, and thus the label and stigma of their act is imprinted on every other necromancer out there...who have to deal with the perception everyone has of them).
At the end of the day, if undead were walking amongst commoners in towns and cities then the argument would be moot. Thats more akin to Ravenloft however than most settings in Pathfinder, with only one or two exceptions (and even those places are pretty small in comparison to every other undead hating/intolerant society out there in pathfinder).
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Just quoting this last line WWWW because my thoughts are building off of that, not because I'm refuting what you've said or anything! (Or referring to you in later paragraphs.)
Again popular opinion should not set the alignment of an act or else alignment would be mutable and nothing could be said to be always good, evil, etc.
That is how we do it in the real world, lacking any sort of detect spells or divinations or spells that allow us to talk to outsiders that personify moral and ethical values. The group decides what is offensive to it, and passes laws to that effect.
Go to the right place, and a woman talking alone with a man who isn't her husband is automatically guilty of immoral and unethical acts, and it would be good and right to stone her death.
We impose our own cultural standards on other people all the time, and if the acts in the previous sentence seems like an abominable injustice to you, as it does to me, then that's because we both have totally opposing views of 'good and right' than the people throwing the stones.
And yet, here we are, also holding stones, also filled with righteous outrage, also prepared to chuck them at the people *we* consider to be behaving monstrously...
But this is a game, set in a made-up fantasy world with neither Bible nor Constitution.
I don't have to believe in 'moral relativism' or 'absolute morality' or any of that high-falutin' ivory-tower philosophical crap, because, *it's fiction.* (And I dropped Existentialism on day one, because the teacher was clearly stoned, so my education ill-prepared me for a discussion about philosophy...)
Negative energy doesn't exist. Hydras don't exist. Nothing is being defiled or desecrated by talk of imaginary worlds. Other than some unhinged talk about digging up and cutting up real-world people's relatives, there's nothing offensive or scary here, because the majority of posters to this thread have remained temperate and not gotten fiction confused with the real world.
This discussion, to me, has always been about whether or not negative energy (having always been neutral) and animated bodies (being mindless, and, by D&D's own rules, incapable of moral or ethical alignment, and by the text of the 1st edition though 3.5 edition being 'incapable of volition') should be 'automatically' evil.
If I hop in my time machine, I can travel all the way back to the whacky days of 2009, with The Great Beyond, where negative energy and the negative energy plane are not evil, and the natives of the negative energy plane are described as non-evil.
It's a dumb change made in the 3.5 update, contradicts other rules that remain in the 3.5 update, contradicts the *text* of the 3.5 update (where skeletons, despite the word 'evil' added to their alignment, remain incapable of initiative or of doing *anything* that their creator / controller does not instruct them to do, whether malicious or benign), and is now rendered unncessary by the addition to the Paladin's smite ability to explicitly smite undead, regardless of alignment.
This is supposed to be a discussion about a game rule, and the consistent application thereof, not a venue to showcase the fantasy RPG fans tenuous ability to distinguish beween fantasy and reality and gift for making real world threats over rules disagreements, in hopes of getting Tom Hanks to make a sequel to Mazes & Monsters.
Was at BayCon today, and Eberron creator Keith Baker was giving an interesting talk about the creation of Eberron and made a relevant point which I'll paraphrase.
As he said, in Forgotten Realms, there were no atheists because the gods walked the earth regularly and if you wanted to find out whether something was "good" or "evil" you just went and knocked on their door via a 20th level character casting Gate. In contrast, in Eberron, the gods, if they exist, are a lot more distant and morality is a lot murkier. Both are completely valid worlds, but they come from very different perspectives.
Now with that in mind, I'd have to say that Golarion lies between the two poles, and even if you DID manage to show up at one of the god's houses for tea, they would hardly be on the same page in regards to what they considered "good" or "evil" nor would it be outside the question for any of them to ever change their minds. Unlikely on some questions, sure, but not impossible.
This all said, it should also be borne in mind that not all the people who play Pathfinder use it to play in Golarion. I know I certainly don't. Other people don't either.
You could set up a world where the scale of morality is more Ravenloft than Ravenloft and not only do paladins get to smite necromancers because necromancy is evil, and using it even once will create such a great cloud of sin over your head that you immediately change alignment, but the same is also true of enchantresses who use their charms to enslave people's wills, anyone who steals anything for any reason or otherwise claims property which does not rightfully belong to them, anyone who lies for any reason either, people who fall asleep in church, people who ingest (willingly or not) any of a long list of forbidden consumables (ranging from human flesh to alcohol to shrimp cocktail), those who blaspheme, those who dress unchastely (defined as showing even a single micron of skin visible, and failing to have protection against a Ring of X-ray Vision is no excuse), even catching a glimpse of anyone dressed unchastely, and the greatest sinners of all, those who cast oracle bones or read cards or cast any other Divination spell, the most wicked spells imaginable, since they poach on the domain of the gods, for only the gods can truly see the future.
In such a world, all Divination spells get the Evil descriptor, no matter how small or slight. Clairaudience/Clairvoyance? Evil! Augury? Evil! Evil! Detect Magic? Evil! Evil! Evil!
Or the gods could have a Vatican II and get rid of all these sins except this last one. Having zombies massage your feet and feed you shrimp cocktail while you fall asleep in church is fine by them. But someone who casts Arcane Sight is unforgivably wicked while someone who also makes it permanent is such an unrepentant sinner that the gods themselves will come down and stand in line for a chance to hand the nearest paladin a Talisman of Ultimate Good along with the name and address of this paragon of wickedness.
After all, there are still laws on the books against fortunetelling in the US, it's punishable by death in other countries, and there's more than one major religion in the real world who have it high on their list of taboos and sins. It makes as much sense as making Necromancy automatically Evil.
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Animate dead is an evil spell probably because it invariably creates evil creatures.
I always thought Animate Dead was an evil spell because you disturbed the dead to do it - messing with their remains.
Then I figured if you are creating Skeletons (or bone Golems) as guardians for some crypt then it must be purely how you misuse them?
I always thought Animate Dead was an evil spell because you disturbed the dead to do it - messing with their remains.
Then I figured if you are creating Skeletons (or bone Golems) as guardians for some crypt then it must be purely how you misuse them?
Pretty much. Mucking about with dead bodies has traditionally been considered evil in western culture. It, traditionally, disturbs the "rest" of the dearly departed. Burial is supposed to protect the body and spirit / soul from harm. It's why the traditional emphasis is on burial in consecrated ground. It's why "digging up someone's bones" was, again traditionally, a terrible thing to do to them. It disturbed their eternal rest.
In more recent times, thanks to modern medicine, it has been made more acceptable to muck about with the recently departed. With permission of course. Grave robbing, often for medical purposes, was still a serious crime in the 19th century. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a good review of how traditional western culture / society views reanimating the dead. Today, archaeology regularly disturbs the remains of other cultures. But, recently, a re-burial of the remains with appropriate rites is de jure lest their descendents object. Most of the people playing RPGs have their attitudes shaped by modern science. A body is a "thing". Autopsies are the norm. No one makes any real connection between the body and the souls of the departed. Connections that were traditional in our culture in the past and are reflected in D&D. The baseline D&D game reflects traditional western values, not modern ones. Necromancy, by that definition, is evil. Period. Of course, if your game reflects only your own values, more modern mores, or some other cultures values, then it's whatever you say it is. My 2 cp.
*edit* Oh, one other thing. The inevitable come back is "what if you're doing it for a good reason". The traditional answer in western Judeo-Christian culture is that the ends do not justify the means.
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I am just amazed that this discussion is still in circulation. Is it really that hard to imagine why this spell is considered evil?
If someone digs up one of your recently deceased love ones and plays puppet with it, how would you feel? It would not be considered a moral act, would it? In fact, most people would drop their rat if it happened and there would be a lot of outrage.
Now if this also involves dragging the soul of the individual in question back from the afterlife, kicking and screaming, to dwell in some sort of half-life, then how can you consider it not to be evil?
Alright, playing with dead things is weird. Digging up dead things and playing with them is a no, no! Animating dead things and binding the soul of the creature to it is pretty much evil.
I had this conversation a few times with players, as GM or as a player, and it is not very interesting to see how people dispute the alignment of this spell.
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*edit* Oh, one other thing. The inevitable come back is "what if you're doing it for a good reason". The traditional answer in western Judeo-Christian culture is that the ends do not justify the means.
The other one is, "What if the practice of animating the dead is not considered evil by [insert name] society?"
I have no problem with animating dead or slavery in a game. In fact, I really like how slavery in Cheliax was included.
If a character wants to use the animate dead spell, so be it, if they can actually cast it. However, the majority view of the spell (and as stated in the rules) is evil.
A player who cannot handle the moral implications of animating the dead should not use the spell.
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Before we all got neo-religious/paranoid about touching the dead...we would have had no problem with the clan witchdoctor casting animate dead to help defend the village. He would be the guy who oversees burials to make sure they are done right.
So in the end it is purely a cultural shift. Evil is the guy who misuses it.
Animate Dead should not be considered evil (unless you are creating evil sentient undead).
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Before we all got neo-religious/paranoid about touching the dead...we would have had no problem with the clan witchdoctor casting animate dead to help defend the village.
We wouldn't have a problem? I have seen zombie films dude, that s**t is bound to backfire.
It is a bit general to say we would all have no problem with a witch-doctor casting animate dead to help defend the village. May be I am 100% opposed to the witch-doctor animating my old dad's bones!
However, if my character was an Olman tribesman, he might see the use of the animate dead spell in a different light. However, the spell does carry an evil descriptor and the creation of the dead is still considered an evil act.
If we have a game with rules for alignment, don't we need to agree on what is good or evil?