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?
It may be a matter of process not necessarily power source. Undead are by and large powered by negative energy, yes, but it's not necessarily the negative energy that is making them evil. There are MANY spells that employ negative energy but lack the [Evil] descriptor, including death magic type stuff.
Skeletons and Zombies may be Evil because the dark powers that govern such make it so. When you've got gods of Undeath kicking around, it's not hard to imagine such. If the gods of Undeath don't cotton to non-evil Undead, that would explain much.
Admittedly Pathfinder doesn't present a campaign-neutral reason why Skeletons and Zombies act as they do; any more so than they do for Red Dragons being greedy treasure hoarding reptile - i.e. it's a fantasy trope.
Correlation does not imply causation
Just because corpses animated by negative energy are evil does not mean that corpses are evil because they are animated by negative energy.
If you have a problem understanding that read this link.
souls or spirits ? there's a differenceDo animals have souls ?
According to standard rules assumptions, yep. So do plants!
Things may vary according to homebrew settings of course.
I was going to say animals have souls, otherwise, how would you end up reincarnating as a badger. But then I noticed that they don't include animals in the reincarnate list anymore. Haven't since 3.0. I guess its been that long since I had a druid in the party.
Man, what's the point in reincarnating if you can't be a brown bear? ;)
souls or spirits ? there's a differenceDo animals have souls ?
According to standard rules assumptions, yep. So do plants!
Things may vary according to homebrew settings of course.
I was going to say animals have souls, otherwise, how would you end up reincarnating as a badger. But then I noticed that they don't include animals in the reincarnate list anymore. Haven't since 3.0. I guess its been that long since I had a druid in the party.
Man, what's the point in reincarnating if you can't be a brown bear? ;)
Well... Regarding that soul/spirit thing, for what its worth:
You can cast Raise Dead (and the Resurrection spells) on every type of creature except constructs, elementals, outsiders and undead.
The spell descriptions state that the subject's soul must be willing to return.
Therefore, every type of creature that is a viable target for the spell clearly DOES have a soul.
(Just to clarify: no, that does not mean that constructs, elementals, outsiders and undead can't have a soul.)
So yes, animals have souls.
Correlation does not imply causation
It does not AUTOMATICALLY imply causation. Again, taking this idea to extremes is epistemic nihilism.
Correlation is not causation, therefore we can't logically say that the guy with a 50 caliber round found in the victims head died from the gunshot. Hey, his death could have caused the bullet to appear!
Just because corpses animated by negative energy are evil does not mean that corpses are evil because they are animated by negative energy.
If you have a problem understanding that
Condescending much?
It may be a matter of process not necessarily power source. Undead are by and large powered by negative energy, yes, but it's not necessarily the negative energy that is making them evil
Then what is?
Then what is?
Undetermined.
Any answer to that question is mere speculation.
Perhaps the real evil are all the poeple who leave a corpse behind instead of telling their family to cremate them thus leaving an ample supply of material for Necromancers who can't help who they are ;)
Undetermined.
Any answer to that question is mere speculation.
There's different degrees of "speculation"
Moving away from absolute pure logic is usually necessary in the real world
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Perhaps the real evil are all the poeple who leave a corpse behind instead of telling their family to cremate them thus leaving an ample supply of material for Necromancers who can't help who they are ;)
In my first game, we fended off a group of orcs. Then left them where they fell.
Later we got jumped by zombie orcs. And then berated by an NPC for being so careless.
was I going crazy or did someone mention a paizo product which was going to have rules for a white necromancer ?
There's different degrees of "speculation"
Moving away from absolute pure logic is usually necessary in the real world
When you're offering explanations for RAW to the general public, you are best served to consider RAW and logical scrutiny.
There's a difference between saying how you houserule it, and claiming how it is. I already posted how I houserule it, so no need to reiterate.
When you're offering explanations for RAW to the general public, you are best served to consider RAW and logical scrutiny.
Pardon me if i don't think that "The universe makes no sense, its all completely random," is somehow a better or more accurate explanation than "Negative energy bad". Neither example is perfect but the latter is MUCH closer to the truth.
Its all completely random, or its all partially random?
Every little thing makes sense on some level. Some from a strictly game design standpoint (the almighty "balance"), some from a setting continuity standpoint, some from both, some from some other idea in an author's head.
The evil undead thing is really a game design choice, compounded by stereotypical fantasy stuff ("undead are badguys"). It's further reinforced so paladins can go a-smiting, and to appease the intuitive impulses on "life vs. death" which is often mistaken for "good vs. evil" ... the results of which reinforce the association, over and over, until mistakes (like your suggestion, BNW) become commonplace. I'd dare to bet money on my guess here.
The problem is that you idea (BNW) is screaming to be made true. However, it simply isn't. To add fuel to the fire, no authors are forthcoming with non-evil alternatives, which would solve this issue handily.
Correlation does not imply causationIt does not AUTOMATICALLY imply causation. Again, taking this idea to extremes is epistemic nihilism.
Correlation is not causation, therefore we can't logically say that the guy with a 50 caliber round found in the victims head died from the gunshot. Hey, his death could have caused the bullet to appear!
So because I eat breakfast before the sun is up, I should assume that it is my eating of my breakfast that the sun shines. We should assume that no one would have ever shot the victim after he died (to cover up the real cause of death).
I'm not saying that correlation rules out causation because that would just be silly, but it definitely doesn't imply it either. Heavier people tend to be taller, so should we assume weight causes height?
In Paizo's Golarion, negative energy is stated to be non-evil. There's nothing to prove that it is evil. Animate Dead is not proof negative energy is evil. Hey guess what, dead bodies are used to animate dead too, maybe they're evil as well. And Onyx, that's got to be evil.
Things are evil for gamist reasons. 'nuff said. Maybe in your own campaign, things are a lot more reasonable. I know in my own campaign that guns are not armor-piercing, but I won't try to prove Paizo's world as my own.
I'm not saying that correlation rules out causation because that would just be silly, but it definitely doesn't imply it either. Heavier people tend to be taller, so should we assume weight causes height?
..... YES
Weight= denisty X volume*
Volume= Depth X width X height
Is it the only factor? No. Is it A factor? Yes.
Look, take apart every single factor that could possibly make make raising undead evil. NONE of them make ANY sense. You can use an animal corpse for lunch or leather. You can create a stone imitation of life and imbue it with ability to move. You can curse the gods (and indeed some of the deserve a good cursing out) None of these things are evil on their own.. but for some reason when you do it with undead it is actually evil.
I would much rather have a general trend that explains and predicts 90% of something than just say "Well i'm sorry this isn't fitting into a neat little box" Sorry newton, F can't = MA until we figure out that whole friction coefficient thing.
Yes, defining negative energy as evil would end the discussion about what makes undead evil, but again, you would have to give every negative energy powered spell the evil descriptor as well.
But, since positive energy is the opposite of negative energy, you would have to define it as good, so you would also have to give every positive energy powered spell the good descriptor as well.
Which leads to nonsense like having orc and drow clerics/druids that can't heal their allies.
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Which leads to nonsense like having orc and drow clerics/druids that can't heal their allies.
That's the logical end-result of a 'negative energy = evil' paradigm, and could be a fun system to operate under. Evil clerics / druids / etc. would have their own healing spells, that involve transfering life energy around (more like vampiric touch, as negative energy can't *create* life-energy, only steal it from someone else), or that use transmutation magic (to knit flesh and bone together painfully and less efficiently than positive energy, perhaps turning lethal wounds into nonlethal wounds).
Ideally, I'd prefer for negative energy to *never* 'give' or 'create', to not be an endless source of free mechanical energy (via animate dead) or a source of life (via contagion). I'd prefer for negative energy to be a void, to be oblivion, to be the kind of place where energy (and light, and life) goes to die. It would be like darkness or cold, it's not a 'thing,' it's the *absence* of something (just as darkness and cold don't exist in and of themselves, but are merely terms we use for the absence of light or heat). The planarverse would be a kitchen sink, with the positive energy plane being the 'spigot' from which all light and life and energy flows, and the negative energy plane being the 'drain' into which everything goes to die.
This sort of paradigm, where negative energy only ever takes, and never ever gives, would require *all* creatures animated by negative energy to be 'maintained' by something else. Flesh (ghouls), blood (vampires), life-force stolen from other people (shadows, wraiths, spectres), fear (ghosts, haunts), a constant supply of arcane power (liches, animated dead), whatever. Negative energy would be the source of spells of darkness and cold (draining away light and heat), and perhaps even spells like dispel magic (tearing away arcane power), ever-hungering, ever consuming and destroying and unraveling other forces and creatures, never giving life (via contagion) or serving as a free power source (via animate dead).
But that's not the way it works. Way back in 1st edition, there was an *attempt* at consistency (disease-creating mummies being animated by positive energy), but somewhere in the twenty or thirty years since, that's been abandoned, and now it's inconsistent and flawed and what we're stuck with.
Only that they (positive and negative energy) are each other's exact opposite.
But it's better to just leave both of them as neutral anyway.
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Only that they (positive and negative energy) are each other's exact opposite.
The way I described it, they would be opposites. One would be a force of creation, the other a force of destruction.
Currently, *both* are sources of energy and can create life (and can destroy life). They are no more 'exact opposites' than people with different skin colors. They're just different-colored ways of doing the same thing.
But it's better to just leave both of them as neutral anyway.
It's a lot less work, certainly, but then you have to deal with constant arguments about why negative energy isn't evil.
It may be a matter of process not necessarily power source. Undead are by and large powered by negative energy, yes, but it's not necessarily the negative energy that is making them evilThen what is?
As I mentioned, the powers that govern Undeath. Or the malice inherent in the caster necessary to re-animate corpses to do his unholy bidding. Or the reptile-brained remnants of whatever soul-shreds remain in the corpse that provide it with sufficient wherewithal to act in a semi-autonomous manner. Or the reflected impulses of revulsion the animated corpse senses from the living trigger hostility. Or the fact that the inventor of the Animate Dead spell was a malicious bastard who built Evil into the spell.
EDIT: Also, carelessness. The multiverse as described is actually evil-dominant (the Abyss proper is the majority of the outer planes, and all-evil all the time). When you carelessly bring things to unlife with negative energy, evil may taint the process by default.
Death and destruction aren't evil. They're a necessary part of existence, and a balance against life. The material universe is a zero-sum cosmos. Taking away negative energy would leave us all starving eternally, forever infested with viruses and parasites that never die, and with lungs burning as we drown but never die in an endless sea of insects and microorganisms that bloat and writhe in every pocket in our bodies, from eyesockets to nasal cavities to unmentionables. It's an existence far worse than any hell, because the suffering will never end, and is suffered by boundless beings.
That said it is not death and destruction which are evil, so negative energy is not evil. Death, destruction and negative energy are merely favored tools among evil beings.
Include that text under a heading "Negative Energy and Alignment"
DOh. read the weight height thing backwards.
Ideally, I'd prefer for negative energy to *never* 'give' or 'create', to not be an endless source of free mechanical energy (via animate dead) or a source of life (via contagion). I'd prefer for negative energy to be a void, to be oblivion, to be the kind of place where energy (and light, and life) goes to die. It would be like darkness or cold, it's not a 'thing,' it's the *absence* of something (just as darkness and cold don't exist in and of themselves, but are merely terms we use for the absence of light or heat). The planarverse would be a kitchen sink, with the positive energy plane being the 'spigot' from which all light and life and energy flows, and the negative energy plane being the 'drain' into which everything goes to die.
Almost everything you list I've houseruled. I completely agree.
I even went so far as to classify viruses as undead in my game. (their behavior and life cycles support this pretty well, actually.)
I'm playing a Neutral Cleric who worships Norgorber.
She commands Undead but only to protect the party. She uses them to grant flanking or to slow the enemy or protect the wizard.
I don't see this as evil. The Paladin doesn't like what I'm doing and would prefer to kill them but I have assured her that I will not use them in a "evil" manner, or for any "evil" gain.
I don't think there is a specific ruling that defines positive or negative energies tied to Necromancy in Pathfinder, only vague references.
Why is a Contagion spell considered to be "negative energy" spell, or any energy spell for that matter?
Positive/Negative energies are mechanically only tied to magical healing and inflict spells.
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was I going crazy or did someone mention a paizo product which was going to have rules for a white necromancer ?I don't think there is anything coming in a Paizo product. You might be thinking of the White Necromancer base class that will be in the upcoming issue of Kobold Quarterly.
FYI ... Kobold Quarterly #19 is now available! Click Here to get your copy :)