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Where are people coming up with the idea that making zombies and skeletons involves enslaving a soul into the corpse. Nothing, anywhere in the game, suggests that.
I could see that being the case for many other kinds of undead (most of them intelligent), but mindless undead, generally speaking, are more like animated objects than anything else.
Finally, even if a soul is being bound into a corpse, that isn't necessarily evil either, nor does it necessarily create an evil creature.
Mummies are a good example of that.
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Ciretose, Your argument that this very strict specific moral stipulation around undead is necessary for the game to function is just wrong. Wrong and false. I know this because in the homebrew setting I DM and play in, undead are not inherently evil. For example, last campaign I ran, a major NPC was a NG elf lich conjurer. Another major NPC was a N samsaran hedge witch necromancer. There were also evil undead that were hostile to the party that they had to fight. In one combat, the undead the party was in combat with were LG. No one had any trouble differentiating between undead they thought needed to die and undead they didn't think needed to die. The players/their characters didn't and NPCs in the world didn't. The game functions and the game world functions despite the lack of an easy, lazy morality on the issue. Much like the real world functions despite not having an alignment chart we can look up to tell us what to do.
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Here is a real life (well...gaming life) scenario that played out at our table.
Our main GM was a player for a change, and he wanted to play a necromancer who believed that raising the dead was not evil.
Since he is the main GM, and we all trust him, we let him have a go.
He made his character and he had an animated skeleton disguised as a regular person. He named him "Mort".
A large part of his resources and time were devoted to preventing anyone from realizing that Mort was undead. Because if they did, they would kill him. Because the undead are abominations that desecrate someones loved one, making them a slave.
It was fun. And although he thought he was "good" and tried to do "Good" he was committing evil acts that if discovered would have lead to it being completely justifiable for him to be killed both by the party and by anyone he encountered.
When you build the game on the premise of being heroes out to stop evil, you can't be evil.
If you build the game from the premise of being evil, fine. Evil campaigns can be lots of fun.
Even if you build the campaign from the premise of being neutral, you may be able to pull it off, if the upside outweighs the downside of being hunted by do-gooders.
But when the entire premise of the game depends on clear lines of "Good" and "Evil" that underpin why you are still "Good" despite killing lots and lots of sentient beings, you can't just randomly say "But I'm desecrating your dead childs body and enslaving it for good!" and have that be kosher.
Otherwise, how do you justify killing undead before you question them?
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Where are people coming up with the idea that making zombies and skeletons involves enslaving a soul into the corpse. Nothing, anywhere in the game, suggests that.
I could see that being the case for many other kinds of undead (most of them intelligent), but mindless undead, generally speaking, are more like animated objects than anything else.
Finally, even if a soul is being bound into a corpse, that isn't necessarily evil either, nor does it necessarily create an evil creature.
Mummies are a good example of that.
Who said soul.
Those are someone childs arms and legs walking around. That is the actual body of someone who lived and was loved that you are enslaving.
Or is necrophilia ok, since it's just a corpse. There is no soul, right?
I mean, really, burial is just wasteful. We should cook it up, make some pants...
Right?
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Since Ciretose is begging the question anyway, let's turn it on it's head.
Let's say I use Craft: Stonecarving to carve myself a stature of a person.
Then I cast Stone to Flesh. I now have a corpse that isn't related to anyone anywhere.
Now I animate it.
Am I evil?
Otherwise, how do you justify killing undead before you question them?
How do you justify killing an orc before you question them? Orcs are more prone to talking back. Similarly lions, and tigers and bears, oh my! They don't talk back either. Or golems! never know if those are just a guys butler or a rampaging machine of destruction. Or how about a person? You know, in game. Just any person. Lots of guys show up with weapons, disgusting scars, plenty of 7 charisma adventurers who can't talk their way out of a paper bag, some of them even look undead!
Doesn't tell me why undead have to be evil, just tells me it could be a problem in certain settings to bring about your undead horde into town.
For a World where necromancy is not consider always Evil , look at Eberron. The Elves there keep their ancient Ancestors around as lichesThey're not liches they're Deathless. Also the Elves don't "keep" them, they WORSHIP them. Big Difference.
Faerun has the Elf Liches. Never evil too! They're called Baelnorn. I'm not too keen on Ebberon's undead, but aren't undead in Ebberon used as manual labor or something like that by some factions?
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Since Ciretose is begging the question anyway, let's turn it on it's head.
Let's say I use Craft: Stonecarving to carve myself a stature of a person.
Then I cast Stone to Flesh. I now have a corpse that isn't related to anyone.
Now I animate it.
Am I evil?
That is for all intents and purposes a golem. It was no ones child, it was never sentient, it never lived to begin with.
You aren't turning someones son/daughter/wife/etc...into a meat puppet slave to do your bidding in that scenario, are you?
Or are you saying that when someone dies, you can treat the the body like you would a rock and that is kosher?
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Otherwise, how do you justify killing undead before you question them?How do you justify killing an orc before you question them?
Easy. Orcs are generally evil. Or at least the presumption is that they are in most settings, so you assume they are evil and kill them.
Which is why playing an Orc can be quite a challenge if you have a GM with common sense and a non-orc centered campaign in a rational setting.
So what I'm hearing is that it isn't evil to cast Animate Dead if it's cast it on, say, a wolf.
Otherwise, how do you justify killing undead before you question them?How do you justify killing an orc before you question them?Easy. Orcs are generally evil. Or at least the presumption is that they are in most settings, so you assume they are evil and kill them.
Which is why playing an Orc can be quite a challenge if you have a GM with common sense and a non-orc centered campaign in a rational setting.
What about the point at the end about how you never know about people, or constructs(void of face or emotions, under command). Constructs being a better analogy for undead, and humans because that happens in game and humans could pretty much be anything. Should I never attack a person ever without inquiring?
Edit: You just ignored everything else to push forth your own idea that things need to be labeled evil for simplicity.
That is for all intents and purposes a golem. It was no ones child, it was never sentient, it never lived to begin with.
Exactly. It is not necessarily an evil act and it did not necessarily create an evil creature.
And neither is any other casting of Animate Dead.
Your judgement that an animated corpse is evil because it used to be someone's loved one is entirely cultural. It is subjective.
There are some cultures where the animation and preservation of a corpse might be considered sacred (again, mummies).
Unless negative energy itself is evil, there is no reason that Animate Dead should be either.
Summon Monster spells let a person summon actual demons, but even when it's used that way the spell itself isn't evil. What defines the morality of the spell, even when it is used to call the minions of hell itself, is what the spell is used to do.
So why is Animate Dead evil?
But it is okay to turn a human, someone's son/daughter/parent/brother, into a meat slave, as long as the slave in question can still feel pain.Citation?
Animate dead is evil, dominate person is not. That was the point earlier.
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That is for all intents and purposes a golem. It was no ones child, it was never sentient, it never lived to begin with.Exactly. It is not necessarily an evil act and it did not necessarily create an evil creature.
And neither is any other casting of Animate Dead.
Your judgement that an animated corpse is evil because it used to be someone's loved one is entirely cultural. It is subjective.
There are some cultures where the animation and preservation of a corpse might be considered sacred (again, mummies).
Unless negative energy itself is evil, there is no reason that Animate Dead should be either.
Summon Monster spells let a person summon actual demons, but even when it's used that way the spell itself isn't evil. What defines the morality of the spell, even when it is used to call the minions of hell itself, is what the spell is used to do.
So why is Animate Dead evil?
It isn't subjecting. It is factual. That body was a person. You have the option of desecrating it or not desecrating it.
And summoning demons is evil. Look it up.
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Animate dead is evil, dominate person is not. That was the point earlier.But it is okay to turn a human, someone's son/daughter/parent/brother, into a meat slave, as long as the slave in question can still feel pain.Citation?
Dominate can be used instead of killing, making it a kinder and therefore more "good" option.
Animate dead is either you are desecrating the body or you aren't. There is no scenario where it is kinder to the victim to raise their undead corpse as your slave.
They were suggesting that the body is just "a dead hunk of matter" and so what you do with it is irrelevant.
Not irrelevant. Subjective.
Not every culture views the dead with the same reverence that you seem to. There are cultures in the real world that view dead bodies as empty vessels. There are others that will gladly eat the flesh of their dead relatives.
In norse mythology the primary undead references were of fallen heroes who were returned to avenge a wrong, or to fight the battle of ragnarok. Only the best and most noble were allowed to return from the dead.
To one particular culture burning a body (like we do pretty routinely) is considered the worst kind of insult and judgement (essentially meaning that the person who died was so bad that they should not be allowed to return to the earth, and should be doomed to wander the land invisible, forever, without being able to be part of it again)
Ever have a relative cremated? Gosh, sounds like you're Evil.
And summoning demons is evil. Look it up.
looks like you're right on that one. Thanks.
Dominate can be used instead of killing, making it a kinder and therefore more "good" option.
I think your just splitting hairs now. The scenario with the corpse could also involve raising it to kill the undead in the haunted mausoleum your traveling too. They could be bandits or the necromancers who raised them in the first place, people who only would do harm and who now have been given a use for good in death(ironic!)
Dominates usual use is to do something worse than raising a mindless corpse. You dominate someone and force them to kill their own allies before possibly killing them, while they're still alive and conscious(depending on how you read the spell).
Desecrating a corpse isn't inherently evil. That's actually a cultural thing. Most cultures to my knowledge don't say much about bringing the thing back to life... Treatment of a corpse varies. Some cultures are just fine with cannibalism even!
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There's also no situation in which it is kinder to the victim to murder them than to not murder them, but you don't seem to have any issue with that.
Which is why it is not inherently evil. It can be evil, but it could be used for not evil purposes.
If you dominate someone, or kill someone, you aren't generally being kind to them.
But since there is a scenario where you could be, neither is an inherently evil act.
Desecrating someones body into a meatpuppet slave on the other hand...
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Not irrelevant. Subjective.
They were suggesting that the body is just "a dead hunk of matter" and so what you do with it is irrelevant.
HIS NAME WAS ROBERT PAULSON!
It isn't subjective. That was a person, you are making someones child into a meat puppet slave, and at least on Golarion, offending the gods.
Evil.
Desecrating someones body into a meatpuppet slave on the other hand...
I think your creating a bias where the body is always an unwilling meatpuppet. That's not necessarily true, and you enter a more morally gray area when you think about how you could use the corpse for good. Like you know, killing more undead or necromancers or what have you. Some of the elf examples earlier are ones that are actually signed in their will.
But whatever. Could beat that dead horse for a while and it wouldn't budge. Someone asked how necromancy could be good, not why its always evil according to Ciretose.
Ciretose, can you come up with a character concept in which a character animates or controls undead creatures for good purposes?
Can you come up with scenarios in which a person might want to come back as undead?
Do you think those scenarios have value as stories?
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Where are people coming up with the idea that making zombies and skeletons involves enslaving a soul into the corpse. Nothing, anywhere in the game, suggests that.
Classic Horrors Revisited, p 56, suggests it in a side-bar, although it is initially softened with a 'some even say' unreliable-narrator-RP-speak sort of sentence, later sentences seem more firm on the subject that making a corpse into a skeleton or zombie rips its soul out of its after life and traps it in the undead.
Presumably it also slaps Pharasma right in the face as it utterly trumps her ability to send souls places, and gooses Asmodeus as it has the power to snatch souls that he's stolen via infernal contracts, and bops Sarenrae on the foreheads as it *utterly destroys one of her Solars* because it's body from when it was a mortal, before it became a petitioner and painstakingly earned its way up the Outsider chain over centuries, just got turned into a 1 HD skeleton.
In theory, several ascended gods in Golarion might have mortal remains buried around, just waiting for someone to cast animate dead and murder a deity.
But since that entire concept is absurd, I'll take James Jacobs word that this doesn't actually happen.
Spells that create undead do sort of bypass Pharasma's judgement... but Classic Horrors certainly overstated things. You can't completely rob Pharasma of a soul to judge by casting animate dead on a body, but that act certainly violates the body and annoys Pharasma. Even if a soul's been judged and has moved on to its reward/punishment, if it's body's still around you can still animate it if you want.
Finally, even if a soul is being bound into a corpse, that isn't necessarily evil either, nor does it necessarily create an evil creature.
What's totally cool (as in hilarious) about the 'animate dead steals souls' argument, is that the skeleton or zombie created is NE, has an Int of 0, and doesn't have any of the class abilities or skills, etc. of the dead person whose body is being animated (and soul stolen). So, far from an eternity of torment, they are apparently dormant in there, because you can't read their minds, you can't detect their alignments, you can't anything. They are completely 'not there,' mechanically, to any spell or ability you want to use to check.
Better, their alignment in life is apparently irrelevant. Being animated as a skeleton turns you NE. So, find the tomb of a 17th level Paladin, cast animate dead on his bones, and you have a 1 HD NE critter, that you can then bash with a mace and destroy, sending that 17th level Paladin's soul back for judgment *as a NE creature.*
There are so many different ways that this interpretation is ludicrous, that it's *fun* to actually think about.
Non-evil negative energy + non-evil meat does not equal 'evil.' It certainly doesn't violate the will of anything, unless that creature was some sort of multi-souled creature that left some of itself behind in its meat. The 'will' done gone and left the building.
And yeah, healing spells should go back to being necromancy. It is the school that masters life and death, after all. Conjuration certainly didn't need the extra spells, and if 'conjuring' instantaneous negative energy effects is necromancy, then 'conjuring' instantaneous positive energy effects should also be necromancy.
(Or, more likely, *both* of them should be evocation effects, and necromancy, as a school, should be axed completely from the game, since game designers can't seem to figure out what to do with it, having a bizarre love-hate relationship with it, and many of its spells belong in other schools anyway. Fear spells? Belong in enchantment. Negative energy spells? Conjuration for long-term effects (summoning shadows), evocation for instantaneous effects (inflict wounds, cure wounds), transmutation for stuff like ray of enfeeblement or touch of fatigue. Alternately, necromancy could be *expanded,* and include 'hungry' spells that negate or drain or subtract or devour energy, ranging from darkness spells to cold spells to dispel magic, and possibly even acid effects, if one sees the negative energy plane as the primordial sea of chaos that predated the dawn of light and form into the universe, less 'black hole' and more 'Tiamat / Apophis' in nature.)
Eh. TL;DR.
Mindless things be mindless. Scorpions, fable aside, can't be evil, 'cause they have no brains, and are functionally incapable of 'malice aforethought.' You have to *want* to be evil (or good!), it doesn't just happen by default if you sit there not thinking long enough.
Shoving a bunch of non-evil negative energy into something that isn't even a little bit evil doesn't make it evil, any more than casting a thousand cure wounds spells fills a demon up with so much positive energy that it spontaneously 'turns good.'
Saying otherwise is, IMO, absurd. And tossing around 'desecrating' as regards to dead bodies is meaningless in a fantasy game, where there is a literal *goddess of undeath* to whom making undead is *sacred* and *holy.* Even in some bizarre world where flesh is sacred (and it's actually blasphemous to say so, as only God is sacred, not earthly things like corpses or flags), that wouldn't apply to the flesh of non-human creatures, many of whom we *eat* (or wear on our bodies, or make all sorts of products out of, or even burn the black sludge that is all the remains of their bodies in our cars), many of whom were *evil* and make far better undead than people's commoner 1 grandmothers would, which would generally be a huge waste of onyx, and would only happen if the necromancer was not so much evil, as stupid, wasteful and at least a little bit insane.
Alignment is earned, or it means nothing.
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Dominate can be used instead of killing, making it a kinder and therefore more "good" option.I think your just splitting hairs now. The scenario with the corpse could also involve raising it to kill the undead in the haunted mausoleum your traveling too.
The reason you are descrating a corpse to make a meat puppet slave doesn't change the fact that you are making someone's child/wife/son/daughter into an undead slave.
In the case of Dominate you "could" be doing something not evil to the person you are casting it on. You could be controlling them instead of killing them, as I said. Or they could be evil and so you were going to kill them anyway because, hello, evil.
But the dead are already dead. They aren't going to hurt anyone, they aren't a danger that needs to be stopped. You have no justification for desecration of the body. You aren't stopping them from doing evil, you aren't saving others from them. You are just making them into meat puppet slaves.
If I dominate the BBEG, I am saving people from the BBEG. If I animate the BBEG's body, I'm not saving anyone from the BBEG. I'm just desecrating his remains and giving the gods the middle finger.
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Ciretose, can you come up with a character concept in which a character animates or controls undead creatures for good purposes?
Can you come up with scenarios in which a person might want to come back as undead?
Do you think those scenarios have value as stories?
I did and posted it above. Well, my friend did. We played it for about 3 levels, then he got sick of having to summon a new one and make an excuse every time someone tried to "heal" his friend.
But he was committing an evil act each and every time, and if he got caught he knew he would be condemned.
Because he was doing something evil, even if he didn't think it was evil. Just like most well made BBEG don't consider themselves "evil".
I'm a guardsman that got slaughtered by the BBEG's advance through my town.
Along comes a PC who is an Ancestor Oracle. He uses his Speak With Dead ability to ask me what happened. He asks me if I'd like the chance to fight again, and possibly save my family who was captured by the BBEG.
I say Yes. I become undead.
Is the PC who raised me evil?
The reason you are descrating a corpse to make a meat puppet slave doesn't change the fact that you are making someone's child/wife/son/daughter into an undead slave.
You know, in DND lots of people stab me and I stab lots of people. Just the way it works. Your not about to go tell every adventurer they're bad guys are you? The same logic applies doesn't it? I mean, not so much the undead slave part, but the doing bad things to them portion. You tend to do a lot of bad things to people, most of them while their conscious. Raising their corpse doesn't harm them mentally or physically. Is it really worse, an objective thing that is always evil and pushing you towards evil, more so than ripping them up with weapons or dominating their mind and stripping them of free will while they breath and think?
Why does desecrating have to be evil? Its a chunk of meat that wasn't being used. I use it to kill some bad guys I gave it a better use than it was just rotting didn't I? Would you rather me feed it to a beast or bury it where nothing will grow? Its cultural, not inherent. Looking purely at the consequences, no one is harmed, but you have something to gain.
But he was committing an evil act each and every time, and if he got caught he knew he would be condemned.
So your game was using the Crawling Darkness option. Undead are always evil and Negative energy is inherently corruptive.
That's great, and presents a lot of interesting themes to explore in your game. It gave your friend an interesting dilemma. I fully support that.
Do you think that every game should have to be based on that same moral assumption?
Do you think that every game should have to be based on that same moral assumption?
How else are you going to know what to stab! Kidding, but it was a point I was getting at earlier that there is a mentality that if you don't paint your targets people won't know what to do.
Ok, TL;DR
But I have a question, having skimmed.
How is it that it's not an evil act, under any situation, to create something that if not tightly controlled will go off on a rampage and kill every living thing it comes across?
The closest thing I can think of in real life would be to create a robot that had chainsaws built into it, visual recognition, and then program it to chainsaw anything that looked human unless someone told it not to every few hours and then release it into a mall full of holiday shoppers. The first time someone makes a mistake with this thing, it's going to start cutting poeple into bits.
Same with an undead, it attacks the nearlest living thing if not constantly controlled. What happens the first time the supposed 'white necromancer' get's knocked unconscious in combat and his 'white undead' begin attacking his team mates?
If your sandboxing some custom world, then that's fine, but in a core rules setting, how is being a raise undead creature character not just a way to screw around with the game and mess things up for everyone? Unless it's an evil game obviously, in which case, go for it.
Ok, TL;DR
But I have a question, having skimmed.
How is it that it's not an evil act, under any situation, to create something that if not tightly controlled will go off on a rampage and kill every living thing it comes across.
Because not all undead do that. Mummies don't. Hecuva don't. Ghosts don't. In many stories Vampires try not to.
Non-evil undead aren't that uncommon.
For the inherently evil ones, yeah, I agree with you.
Ok, TL;DR
But I have a question, having skimmed.
How is it that it's not an evil act, under any situation, to create something that if not tightly controlled will go off on a rampage and kill every living thing it comes across.
Because not all undead do that. Mummies don't. Huecuva don't. Ghosts don't. In many stories Vampires try not to.
Non-evil undead aren't that uncommon.
For the inherently evil ones, yeah, I agree with you.
Speaking of various non-evil undead, having mummies be evil never made sense to me.
Thankfully, I made most of them into lawful good tomb guardians in my own campaign setting.
Also, back in 2e and 3.0e (if I recall right), skeletons and undead were true neutral due to being mindless.
Also, back in 2e and 3.0e (if I recall right), skeletons and undead were true neutral due to being mindless.
That is correct. Golarion's default is that all undead are inherently evil, and the rules reflect that stance, which is why things like Animate Dead have the evil descriptor.
It's a setting specific rule. In any other setting the question has to be re-addressed.
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Ok, TL;DR
But I have a question, having skimmed.
How is it that it's not an evil act, under any situation, to create something that if not tightly controlled will go off on a rampage and kill every living thing it comes across?
You've just described golems, but not most undead.
It's a setting specific rule. In any other setting the question has to be re-addressed.
Unfortunately, it's a setting-specific rule that has crept into the setting-neutral Bestiaries and the setting-neutral Core rulebook, which is kind of polluting the entire concept of keeping those lines separate.
First they take our neutral undead away.
What next, our concept Clerics?
And after that?
Those monsters want to take all the variety away from our game!
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It's interesting that no one has brought up the topic of the moral grey area of not using Raise Dead to bring a loved one back from a tragic death when such a spell not only exists, it's a not so uncommon tool of random adventurers. How does the argument that a necromancer animating the remains of "someone's child/brother/sister/etc" is an evil act when it is within that someone's power to bring them back from the dead? Seems like there are some crocodile tears being shed here.
And if they really had such a moral objection to someone animating their "loved one" why didn't they cremate the corpse? You can't animate without at least a "mostly intact corpse or skeleton." Naturally, this doesn't apply to freshly dead corpses but assuming the non-evil necromancer hasn't broke his alignment and is randomly murdering some passersby, they're animating a fallen foe who nine times out of ten is Evil.
And I have to throw my hat in on the side objecting to the morality of Dominate Person. A few folks here have presented it as a form a mental slavery. That's not quite accurate. It's a lot closer to mental rape. Heck, Charm Person is almost worse in that it's effects are far more insidious.
It amazes me that puppetting a pile of inanimate matter is a greater evil than psychic rape to the subset of people that rally behind paladins and capital G, Goodness. There's a reason I've always chosen Enchantment as one of my prohibited schools when playing a Wizard.
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Hey guess what every one. This is inside knowledge so dont tell any one. Undead do not have to be animated from sentient beings. Bears, horses, and other woodland creatures and mythic creatures, looks at dragon, make great undead. If a druid give you lip just say you use all the parts and none gone to waste, not even the bones. Plus side you can use animate object on the bones once the undead creature no long functions.