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Cart before the horse, people. Animate Dead is an [Evil] spell because it creates evil undead, not because it employs negative energy. For the same reason Summon Monster is [Evil] when you use it to summon demons. Creating/summoning evil thing is an inherently evil act.
Along with this, it bears repeating that Juju Oracles can cast Animate Dead without the [Evil] descriptor to create non-evil undead.
Negative energy still gets used, but whatever is evil about Animate Dead is removed and not in play for Juju Oracles.
Putting QED at the end of a statement doesn't make everything i said irrelevant.
But everything you said is very selective in how you process information, and neglects the simple logic of the very things you argue about.
Animate Dead is [evil] because it only creates supernatural beings with an evil alignment. Just like how summoning spells are [evil] when they summon evil beings. You can't make Ghosts with Animate dead (and Ghosts are undead - beings of negative energy - which can have any alignment), only Zombies and Skeletons.
Negative energy includes such things as death, disease, fear, undeath, and so on. None of these things are evil per se, and many of them (except undeath) are very natural, even required for the balances of nature - any druid would thus be fine with plenty of necromancy, and/or uses of negative energy.
Yes, yes, there are many [evil] spells which use negative energy. Yes, evil priests are pigeonholed into using negative energy by default - only because death and fear are the favorite tools of evil. But (to invoke Godwin's law for fun) if Nazi Germany ruled 90% of Europe, does Europe = Nazism? Nope. That 10% is an exception. Just the same, if some significant subset of all the uses for negative energy were evil, it just means that lots of them are evil, not all. It certainly doesn't mean equivalence.
Elementary logic.
But everything you said is very selective in how you process information, and neglects the simple logic of the very things you argue about.
An unbacked ad hom. Ie, an insult.
You create a construct. You tell it to guard the room. It guards the room and tries to kill anyone that comes in. Neutral.
You create a skeleton. You tell it to guard the room. It guards the room and tries to kill anyone that comes in. Evil.
Unless the difference is the source of the animating power, then what is the difference?
Elementary logic.
Elementary and insufficiently advanced.
if Nazi Germany ruled 90% of Europe, does Europe = Nazism? Nope
The [evil] in the descriptor clearly points at that particular spell being in Berlin.
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This thread might help a bit:
There is some discussion about why animating dead could be considered evil. James also mentioned on a previous thread (I cannot find the link, so not much help) that animating the dead messes with the soul and this is why it is evil (it traps part of the dead person's soul in the body to animate it).
I have mentioned this in another thread. There was an old Forgotten Realms supplement in 2nd Edition AD&D called Lords of Darkness (the first title, not the second one later) that basically worked on any undead involving the original soul being trapped and controlled inside the body. As Set has mentioned, I think WotC in 3.0 and 3.5 Forgotten Realms never revisited this idea in later books.
I know in campaigns I have played in over the years, the very act of animating the dead was considered evil. However, it was not something that was always stated in a book. Magic, for my group, is based more on what you do with it. So violating the dead and playing puppetmaster with their bodies was not something that was considered good or moral.
Personal choice.
Why are skeletons and zombies evil? They're exactly the same as animated objects, mechanically, except that they're made of dead bodies. They don't even need to be dead bodies that used to be people.
This is exactly the crux of the argument.
If they are evil, the are evil because of something in their nature, since they definitely never learned evil behavior. Skeletons and zombies are not exactly victims of their own upbringings or moral failings.
If they are evil, then evil must be inherent in what they are. They are simply made of evil. That's an excellent argument for making Negative Energy itself evil. Making that choice changes a lot of things in your game, and adds a lot of dimension to the world's spirituality. Necromancers become really, really bad people just by virtue of the powers they deal in, comparable to demonoligists.
On the other hand, if you say negative energy is not evil, then by extension skeletons and zombies should not be either. That's also a fine choice, and makes necromancers merely creepy and toying with dangerous powers. There's a lot of anti-hero possibilities and moral grey-ness to this choice.
Ultimately the choice is up to every GM.
The mechanics of why they are evil has already been covered. It was a change made in 3.5 so that paladins could smite them. That's all. It's just an arbitrary design choice that has thrown everyone who ever wanted to play a necromancer into this exact fight.
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There is some discussion about why animating dead could be considered evil. James also mentioned on a previous thread (I cannot find the link, so not much help) that animating the dead messes with the soul and this is why it is evil (it traps part of the dead person's soul in the body to animate it).
Classic Horrors Revisted, p. 56, has a sidebar that says;
"The fear of the walking dead is also the fear of becoming one of them - a mindless slave under the control of someone else. A person transformed into a zombie loses his freedom, his individuality, his conscience, and some might say his very soul. And not even death can save you from such a fate, because your final reward - a peaceful death, and a heavenly afterlife - is also taken from you. Becoming a member of the walking dead means nothing less than a horrific, unending life without hope of rest."
On the other hand, when I specifically brought this up with James, he said that he absolutely did not agree with this, and that animate dead could not grab a soul out of heaven or hell.
Like Paladins of Asmodeus or Clerics of Walkena, it seems that this is one of those things that James would have preferred not have gotten written.
Becoming a member of the walking dead means nothing less than a horrific, unending life without hope of rest."
Well, if this is the case, then Animate Dead is pure dagnasty evil.
Like Paladins of Asmodeus or Clerics of Walkena, it seems that this is one of those things that James would have preferred not have gotten written.
And if we ignore it, like JJ would prefer, then Animate Dead is as evil as Animate Object.
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On the other hand, when I specifically brought this up with James, he said that he absolutely did not agree with this, and that animate dead could not grab a soul out of heaven or hell.
I saw that you posted on the other thread as well.
Animating the dead has been debated at our gaming table at times as well. Especially when a new player has arrived and we've had our preconceived ideas about it being evil or not.
I remember a lot of discussion about it in my early gaming experience, in the 2nd Edition days, because some of the supplements either stated or implied that it was evil because the soul was being ripped out of the afterlife.
I like the idea of magic being neutral, but the intentions of wielder determine if it is evil or not. You can always throw in morality and society to complicate the matter further.
I seem to recall a "Grey Necromancer" kit from AD&D 2nd Edition that allowed someone to be a necromancer without the stigma of being evil. Cannot remember where it was though, probably in a Complete Book?
You create a construct. You tell it to guard the room. It guards the room and tries to kill anyone that comes in. Neutral.
You create a skeleton. You tell it to guard the room. It guards the room and tries to kill anyone that comes in. Evil.
Unless the difference is the source of the animating power, then what is the difference?
The difference is the alignment of the being you create. I thought I said that already.
A.D. creates an evil being.
A.O. creates a neutral being.
just like how Summoning a dire wolf is neutral, while summoning a demon is evil.
You're ignoring the fact that A.D. creates evil creatures, thus earning the [evil] descriptor. Why does any spell have an [evil] descriptor? Because it uses supernatural/magic power to call directly upon evil (such as creating evil beings), or to directly opposed good (such as Dispel Good).
Undead are not all evil, but skeletons and zombies are.
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I seem to recall a "Grey Necromancer" kit from AD&D 2nd Edition that allowed someone to be a necromancer without the stigma of being evil. Cannot remember where it was though, probably in a Complete Book?
Probably the Complete Book of Necromancers. I would have bet that Wolfgang Bauer and / or Zeb Cook was behind that one, since Tanith (from Secret College of Necromancy) and Kazarabet (from Complete Book of Necromancers) seemed like such similar characters, but it looks like Steve Kurtz did that one.
One thing for sure, Necromancy gets a heck of a lot more core and 3rd party support than any of the other schools! Illusion, Conjuration, etc. get nowhere near that level of support.
Right, wrong, good, bad, it sure grabs the attention and fires the imagination.
Abjuration and Divination totally could use some love...
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Probably the Complete Book of Necromancers. I would have bet that Wolfgang Bauer and / or Zeb Cook was behind that one, since Tanith (from Secret College of Necromancy) and Kazarabet (from Complete Book of Necromancers) seemed like such similar characters.
Lucky they never wrote the Complete Book of Complete Books! It would have been a thousand odd pages. I think there was a Complete Book for everything.
They never seemed quite Complete though! :D
Undead are not all evil, but skeletons and zombies are.
I'm not ignoring anything.
You create a construct. You tell it to guard the room. It guards the room and tries to kill anyone that comes in. Neutral.
You create a skeleton. You tell it to guard the room. It guards the room and tries to kill anyone that comes in. Evil.
A skeleton is DOING the exact same thing as the construct. What makes the skeleton evil and the construct neutral?
You're assuming a completely consistent world here. Worse, you're assuming that I'm assuming it, when i've flat out stated that i am not.
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You create a construct. You tell it to guard the room. It guards the room and tries to kill anyone that comes in. Neutral.
You create a skeleton. You tell it to guard the room. It guards the room and tries to kill anyone that comes in. Evil.
A skeleton is DOING the exact same thing as the construct. What makes the skeleton evil and the construct neutral?
Can personal taste be grounds for labelling someone evil?
I mean, a tasteful statue that guards the room. Sure. Someone's preserved remains? Yuck!
The following is from the Tome of Necromancy, and covers both sides of this argument extremely well.
__Moral Option 1: The Crawling Darkness__
Many DMs will choose to have Negative Energy in general, and undead in particular, be inherently Evil. So much so that we can capitalize it: Evil. And say it again for emphasis: Evil. That means that when you cast a negative energy wave you are physically unleashing Evil onto the world. When you animate a corpse, you are creating a being whose singular purpose is to make moral choices which are objectionable on every level.
That’s a big commitment. It means that anyone using Inflict Wounds is an awful person, at least while they are doing it. The Plane of Negative Energy is in this model the source of all Evil, more so than the Abyss or Hell. It’s Evil without an opinion, immorality in its purest most undiluted form.
__Moral Option 2: Playing with Fire__
Many DMs will choose to have Negative Energy be a base physical property of the magical universe that the D&D characters live in – like extremes of Cold or Fire it is inimical to life, and it is ultimately no more mysterious than that. An animate skeleton is more disgusting and frightening to the average man than is a stone golem, but it’s actually a less despicable act in the grand scheme of things because a golem requires the enslavement of an elemental spirit and a skeleton has no spirit at all.
The Plane of Negative Energy in this model is precisely the same as all the other elemental planes: a dangerous environment that an unprotected human has no business going to.
Implications
It’s not actually enough to simply make a sweeping generalization about the morality of Negative Energy and leave it at that. Like a butterfly flapping its wings, such changes will eventually cause Godzilla to destroy Tokyo. Or something like that, I stopped math at Calculus.
_______Creatures________
Some monsters have been written up with the (incorrect) assumption that either “The Crawling Darkness” or “Playing With Fire” was the general rule. Others have been written in such a fashion that is actually incompatible with any possible interpretation of morality in D&D.
Skeletons: If Negative Energy is inherently Evil, Skeletons must be as well. That means that they actually do Evil things. An uncontrolled skeleton will find the nearest source of life and start ripping it to pieces. A skeleton does not need to be commanded to attack, but to stop tearing up your vegetable garden (assuming even that it had not already found a more vigorous source of life such as the family dog). A commanded skeleton is a vicious, unthinking killer on a chain – not an inert construct awaiting commands.
If Negative Energy isn’t Evil by itself, neither are skeletons. As described they aren’t moral agents. That means that they don’t have an alignment other than Neutral. Like a viper or a scorpion, though they do things that a paladin wouldn’t necessarily condone (such as use poison for the snake or move around after death for the skeleton), they aren’t gifted with the ability to make moral choices and default to the same Neutrality of the animated cabinet. Ordering a skeleton around could be Good, Evil, or Neutral depending on whether you are telling it to save children from a burning house, throw bloated corpses into the town well, or just carry your swag out of your basement.
Vampires: Vampires are the rockstars of the undead world, but also the most affected by the gulf between Playing With Fire and Crawling Darkness Necromancy. Either vampires are tragically cursed Euro-trash with nice outfits or they are blood hungry princes of death…heck, sometimes they are depicted as both, as in the case of the patron saint of DnD vampires, Strahd Von Zarovich.
Unlike most undead, vampires are morally affected by negative energy in a perversely contrary fashion; Zombies are evil if (and only if) negative energy makes zombies evil, but the opposite is true of the vampire. If Negative energy is a hungry and malevolent force that hungers for the light of the living, the vampire is a tragic figure compelled by dark desires he cannot control. He can even just be Good, but that’s not going to stop him from taking a nip from the farmer’s daughter. If negative energy is an objective force, then being a vampire is actually an evil act since you don’t have to eat babies for eternal life… you’re just a jerk.
Zombies: Like Skeletons, Zombies must hunger for the flesh of the living or have no moral indictments. Either they sit and wait for their chance to devour your liver or they are Neutral. The Monster Manual version cannot stand. A zombie in the fields is either a figure of horror or comedy.
_____Spells_____
Animate Dead: If Negative Energy isn’t Evil, this spell isn’t either. Zombies and Skeletons are the only possible creations of this spell, so the alignment tag is contingent on Negative Energy itself being a moral choice. Interestingly, create undead and create greater undead stay [Evil] even if animate dead doesn’t. Regardless of the moral inclinations of negative energy in general, Ghouls and shadows are just not nice people – they are a disease that exists for no purpose but to consume the living. So those [Evil] tags are on no matter what skeletons do with their free time.
Deathwatch: This spell doesn't even use Negative Energy, it allows you to see positive energy. There's no reason for this spell to be evil no matter what version you use – this is just a typographical error as far as we can tell. Maybe this evil tag was supposed to be on death knell.
Create Undead: While animate dead may or may not be evil depending upon your setup, create undead and create greater undead is an [Evil] spell regardless of the morality version you use. It creates evil creatures that unlive for nothing but to slay innocents, so it gets the Evil tag for the same reason that planar binding gets the [Evil] tag if it is used to call a Demon – it's bringing irredeemable evil into the world – the moral implications of the negative energy used are irrelevant.
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Ultimately the choice is up to every GM.
I'd like to point out that the 'necromantic energies' mentioned may be the source of the evil. And no, 'necromantic energies' is not automatically talking about negative energy.
Edit: Ragnar, Frank leaves out the possibility of there being something that makes undead Evil while negative energy remains Neutral.
Possibly because the gods themselves have objectively declared creating undead an Evil act.
I'd like to point out that the 'necromantic energies' mentioned in the spells may be the source of the evil. And no, 'necromantic energies' is not automatically talking about negative energy.
I'll give you that. I sure cant think of anything that would qualify as a Necromantic Energy that wasn't directly tied to negative energy though. Can you?
Frank leaves out the possibility of there being something that makes undead Evil while negative energy remains Neutral.
Which ties directly into what you said earlier. Sure. I'll give you that it's possible. There just aren't any existing examples of spells or mechanics that we can use to back that up. We'd have to come up with some other, new reason for mindless undead to be evil.
What seems simplest to me in terms of narrative and mechanics is to lump mindless undead in with their power source, rather than make up some reason why mindless undead are evil but the source of their animation and power isn't.
I can see merits to either choice as to whether negative energy is evil or not, but to have negative energy be neutral but mindless undead to be evil seems baseless to me.
Does she cast Evil spells?Possibly because the gods themselves have objectively declared creating undead an Evil act.Does Urgathoa see herself as evil?
Are STD's marked with an Evil decriptor?
Can paladins smite them?Are STD's marked with an Evil decriptor?Does she cast Evil spells?Possibly because the gods themselves have objectively declared creating undead an Evil act.Does Urgathoa see herself as evil?
He's immune to them. And he can remove them with a mercy.
So perhaps they are smote purely by contact with him?
Like half the other things in the game. :)
Touche'
Tu Quoquo fallacy says that we shouldn't just accept the wrongness of something because of the wrongness of other things though.
I know you're usual hardline is to argue RAW, but in this case I think we've pretty firmly established what RAW is and that some of the things implied by RAW don't really connect.
It would be nice to lay out some options for people that want to try to reconcile that.
I think if someone asked Urgathoa she'd flat out say that she opposes the tyranny of fate and the uncaring nature of an enforced death. She'll never say she's good because that would just be a lie and she'll never say evil because that's incriminating evidence. She'll say that she believes that one should be allowed to live life to its fullest outside the tyranny of callous gods and entities who instill this wretched notion that one lifetime is enough to experience all that life has to offer.
However what she won't tell you is that her philosophy embraces selfishness to its very extreme. You can find Urgathoa in the man or woman carrying a lethal venereal disease who desperately beds every handsome man or woman they can find to ease their own pain. You can find her in the necromancer who coldly slices the throat of his new horse to raise a fast zombie to have a tireless mount spitting in the face of the natural order. You can find her in the sadomasochists of nobility who savage their servants adn salves in passionate and violent rituals of lust to raise them into undeath to repeat the process again and again and again.
Evil wouldn't have a good grip in this setting if it didn't have good spindoctors making them look good. I've got a player right now whose actually doing a fairly decent job of making Rovagug not seem like such a bad guy.
Where have I accepted the wrongness of RAW? I've only been arguing what is, not what should be.
Oh no, you misunderstand. That's waht I'm saying. You haven't argued the wrongness of RAW at all. Your ability to argue what is is always impressive.
I'm saying that in this case what is falls a little short of what it should be.
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Does Urgathoa see herself as evil?
Her write up in Gods & Magic makes her sound so hopelessly self-absorbed that she's absolutely perplexed that Sarenrae and Pharasma keep picking on her and whatever. She's utterly selfish, utterly wrapped up in her own existence and 'feeding her hunger.' If anything, she even seems to have a bit of a martyr complex about it, as if *she* is the terribly persecuted and misunderstood party.
Urgathoa herself is described as being totally selfish, and not so much *malevolent* as uncaring as to who gets hurt by her pursuit of her own self-satisfaction. She seems about as evil as any celebrity or politician who thinks nothing of who gets hurt or stepped on in their pursuit of their own pleasure.
Her clergy on the other hand, wow, they go nuts with all the plague spreading and stuff. Evil for the sake of self-advancement, evil for the sake of gaining power or wealth or whatever, that's something almost anyone can at least identify with. But the sorts of things that her clergy do in places like Korvosa is just inexplicable, because it doesn't really benefit them in any way. It can't even be justified that they are trying to gain the favor of Urgathoa and advance their power that way, since Urgathoa doesn't seem to give a rat's butt about that stuff (and there are dozens of other gods whose ways they could follow that have nothing to do with such nonsense).
True dat. Precisely why I take alignment out back and shoot it whenever I game. :)
I'm saying that in this case what is falls a little short of what it should be.
A wise choice.
Hah sorry, I can confirm that there is a SWTOR beta and that I'm in the SWTOR beta, hence my lack of posting.
Anyway I figured I throw this on the pile
Anyone read the Dresden Files books ?
I bring it up becuase you have good ole Harry a wizard of the "white" council who is a good guy and tries to do the right thing using his magic to help and protect his fellow humans is tainted heavily with "evil" powers.
e.g. mid series he's augmenting his magic with hellfire from a resident demon sharing his body, now this is clearly an evil source of magic, but his applications are arguably good or at least neutral.
personally I think something is lost in RP potentially if there isn't the possibility for morale ambiguity. drawing on evil powers to do good, if in your RP world at least if there a chance people might say that's okay while others won't tolerate it then I think that makes for a more interesting game.
As long as you can trust your GM to hand you both positive and negative responses to you use of evil for good then I think its worth putting in.
I would also like to throw this in that if you use evil spells alot and your GM therefore says your alignment has adjusted to something Evil that doesn't mean you then have to play evil. I think an interesting challenge would be playing e.g. Lawful Evil do gooder Necromancer who detects as evil but who goes out of his way to help those in need. (this might be a separate discussion in itself though)
You create a construct. You tell it to guard the room. It guards the room and tries to kill anyone that comes in. Neutral.You create a skeleton. You tell it to guard the room. It guards the room and tries to kill anyone that comes in. Evil.
You summon a demon. You tell it to guard the room. It guards the room and tries to kill anyone that comes in. Evil.
Let's not compare apples to oranges. Creating a neutral being is not an evil act. Creating an evil being is an evil act. What you use them for is irrelevant. Skeletons and Zombies are evil - their stat line says so. You may not like or agree with that stat line, but there it is in black and white. You CAN keep a tight rein on them to keep them from doing evil-ish stuff, but if you don't...they will do evil-ish stuff. Leave a construct without orders and it will sit there doing nothing.
If, as has been posted above, Negative Energy is not inherently EVIL, then should Positive Energy be inherently Good? I say this as Elven dead in my world are the reverse of 'most' other undead, imbued with positive energies. This rattled a group while dealing with a Banshee haunting by a deceased Elven Sorceress.
If, as has been posted above, Negative Energy is not inherently EVIL, then should Positive Energy be inherently Good? I say this as Elven dead in my world are the reverse of 'most' other undead, imbued with positive energies. This rattled a group while dealing with a Banshee haunting by a deceased Elven Sorceress.
I always thought undead by definition were negative energy powered. Positive energy powers living things. YMMV. You might have corpse-like things powered by positive energy, but it would be misleading to call them 'undead', methinks - especially from a mechanical perspective.
Let's not compare apples to oranges. Creating a neutral being is not an evil act. Creating an evil being is an evil act.
And again, the skeleton is DOING the exact same thing as its golem counterpart. Why is the skeleton evil?
I'm not ignoring anything.
You create a construct. You tell it to guard the room. It guards the room and tries to kill anyone that comes in. Neutral.
You create a skeleton. You tell it to guard the room. It guards the room and tries to kill anyone that comes in. Evil.
A skeleton is DOING the exact same thing as the construct. What makes the skeleton evil and the construct neutral?
You're assuming a completely consistent world here. Worse, you're assuming that I'm assuming it, when i've flat out stated that i am not.
Skeletons and zombies are evil upon creation (arbitrarily) and golems are neutral upon creation (arbitrarily). It has nothing to do with the actions it performs, especially under the command of someone else.
The RAW in every D&D/Paizo game gives no direct explanation why (except maybe in a splat book), leaving us to speculate. We can pretend we're right or logical about this that or the other thing, but all we're doing is speculating and making things up which are either fluff to tie up loose ends, or generalizations which urinate in the face of consistency. That's the whole reason why this undead/alignment thing is such a hot topic.
But the facts remain: Skeletons and zombies are evil, the spell Animate Dead is [evil], and skeletons and zombies are mindless.
You claim that negative energy is evil, which directly violates consistency.
I "officially" make no claims, and let it all arbitrarily fall where it may. Unofficially, I do one of two things:
Let's not compare apples to oranges. Creating a neutral being is not an evil act. Creating an evil being is an evil act.And again, the skeleton is DOING the exact same thing as its golem counterpart. Why is the skeleton evil?
A dominated assassin being made to guard a room is still an evil person. You can summon a demon to rescue people from a flood. Magically compelling something to do your bidding doesn't change its alignment.
When you create skeletons or zombies, you know the end result are evil things that given the chance, will murder living beings. You might not give them the chance, good for you. But YOUR purposes for the skeletons doesn't change THEIR inherent nature.
Now, if you're asking why the designers made Skellies and Zombies Neutral Evil rather than Neutral...probably because they felt that malicious undead horrors make for better games than motiveless automatons that merely do as they are told. And so that most player parties (being good) wouldn't tote around legions of expendable zombie troops to make encounters a breeze (the same reason they made most constructs so stupid expensive).
Skelies and Zombies are NE in alignment as an Artificial Game Construct so Paladins can smite...
Does it make sense...no.
In a game when you can bring people back from the dead or turn them into ash with a word and a few odds and ends does it matter...no.
Skelies and Zombies are NE in alignment as an Artificial Game Construct so Paladins can smite...
Does it make sense...no.
It wouldn't be quite so senseless if a few lines stating there non-controlled behavior was added.
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Abjuration and Divination totally could use some love...I bet your up to the challenge ...
Naw, not this one.
It's just human nature that the most controversial of the eight schools of magic gets the most attention. We've got Hollowfaust, for instance, a city ruled by a circle of very different Necromancers.
Various settings have stuff like Osirion, heavily focused on Conjuration, or Halrua, heavily focused on Divination, or Nimbral and Illusion, but none detailed or developed in that direction a tenth as well as cities and schools (Secret College of Necromancy) devoted to Necromancy.
2nd edition had a 'Complete Book of Necromancers,' but not one for Illusionists (which used to be their own class!) or Evokers or Transmuters.
It would be intriguing to see cities and / or countries built up around Illusion or Transmutation or Evocation, the way Hollowfaust and Geb were built up around Necromancy.
A society built up around Illusion or Enchantment or Transmutation magic could be *vastly* creepier and more terrifying than anything involving zombies. A society based on glamer and shadow magic, where everything is unearthly fair on the surface and rotting beneath? A culture that thinks nothing of dominating vast fields of slaves? One that sees lesser races (animal or neighboring sentients) as fuel for the flesh-forges, raw matter to be transformed into whatever sort of creature they need at the moment?
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I don't know how many times I've heard or seen this discussed. The same points get brought up over and over again, but no ground is made because no one wants to admit that their viewpoint could be wrong. Or put another way, no one wants to hear the truth because no one wants to have their illusions destroyed.
No matter how you may justify your reasons for animating the dead, it comes to this: selfishness is at the heart of it. It is that selfishness which taints the energies used to animate the dead. And it is that taint which makes it evil. The fact that anyone can refer to a corpse as being merely an object as part of their defense to justify their actions speaks to the heart of people being selfish.
Animating the dead. Let's look at what that means. Animate is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as:
1. possessing or characterized by life
2. full of life
3. of or relating to animal life as opposed to plant life
4. referring to a living thing
So animating the dead, then, would be the process of giving the dead a semblance of life. Why would one need to do this, to give any corpse this sort of treatment?
Selfishness.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines selfish as:
1. concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself: seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard to others
2. arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard to others
3. being an actively replicating repetitive sequence of nucleic acid that serves no known function
(I never give partial definitions to illustrate any point I'm trying to make.)
No matter how well thought out, selfishness is and always will be at the heart of any reason to use corpses to achieve a desired goal, especially if that goal is to save one's own life. There is no negative or positive energy involved with use of the animate object spell, just magical energy. With animate dead, its expressly written what provides animus to the corpse, and though the energy itself is not evil, it comes from a place that is unrelentingly destructive in nature. And that's what now fuels the animated corpse. Sure, safeguards are built into the spell that enable you to keep control of the animate dead...provided, of course, that you don't exceed the limits of that control. Sure you can choose which of them are released, but once they are released they are uncontrolled. So now you have those that were formally dead walking around that are out of your ability to control, animated by your selfishness, given that semblance of life through an energy that is highly destructive to life. Abandoned by the very one that created it in the first place. And yet with the act of casting the spell, this is what you choose to do, knowing that this very circumstance was a possibility that could happen. That's the risk that is taken every time the spell is cast.
But, what if you make the effort to ensure that there's just the right proportion of corpses present that losing control is never a worry? You're still not off the hook. What are you going to do with them now that you have the animated dead fully and firmly under your control? The spell lists two options: they can follow you or remain in a place designated by you to attack creatures that come upon them. If they follow you, well that just means that they'll do what they're told to do by you until they are otherwise destroyed (because they don't just go away, their existence continues until they are forcibly removed from the world of the living, which makes the creatures dependent on you to give them purpose). If you leave them to attack creatures, they're still carrying out what you commanded them to do, the purpose that they were given. Which makes you responsible for their actions, just as surely as if they were following you around to perform at your beck and call.
Selfishness is not good, no matter how pure your intentions may be. Use of the animate dead spell should taint your soul, a thing that is born of positive energy, because there is nothing positive about being selfish. Continued use of it, then, should run the risk of further taint to your soul, because you are allowing it to become a conduit for destructive energies from a realm that leaches life from those possess it. You are essentially allowing the abyss (to take another quote from Nietzsche) to gaze back into you, and thus running the risk of becoming the monster you're trying to fight.
Edit: removed definition of necromancy because the portion of the post that it pertained to was removed as well.
Selfishness is not good, no matter how pure your intentions may be. Use of the animate dead spell should taint your soul, a thing that is born of positive energy, because there is nothing positive about being selfish. Continued use of it, then, should run the risk of further taint to your soul, because you are allowing it to become a conduit for destructive energies from a realm that leaches life from those possess it. You are essentially allowing the abyss (to take another quote from Nietzsche) to gaze back into you, and thus running the risk of becoming the monster you're trying to fight.
And this is where you are wrong. Selfishness is not inherently evil. I can think of dozens of examples to illustrate this, but I'm pressed for time and I'm willing to bet that you're plenty creative.
Lots of good things are selfish. The desire to keep living, protect the people you care for and create more and better ways of improving your quality of life included.
When you create skeletons or zombies, you know the end result are evil things that given the chance, will murder living beings. You might not give them the chance, good for you. But YOUR purposes for the skeletons doesn't change THEIR inherent nature.
And why on earth is their inherent nature to pointlessly kill life (otherwise known as evil) unless the thing powering them is evil?