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Geb is a whole nation of (mostly) undead, maybe there are some good ones there?
There may be some neutral ones. In the web fiction short story Blood Crimes there's a ghoul who seems to be friends with a living human.
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It's probably an evil act to make a kid work in a coal mine until they get black lung too. I'd say doubly so when you have a cheap and disposable replacment available.
Creating undead is an evil act because it results in the creation of evil creatures. If the corpse you animated belonged to a non-evil creature, then you've even added to the sum of evil in the world.
So, the helm of opposit alignment fixes this problem.
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It's probably an evil act to make a kid work in a coal mine until they get black lung too. I'd say doubly so when you have a cheap and disposable replacment available.
Just stay evil and animate the corpse of the kid after he died ;-)
Geb is a whole nation of (mostly) undead, maybe there are some good ones there?There may be some neutral ones. In the web fiction short story Blood Crimes there's a ghoul who seems to be friends with a living human.
Evil creatures can have friends too. Evil does not automatically mean bloody serial killer. Just as Good does not automatically means Ghandi or Mother Theresa
IIRC, he used to be LG. He dropped to LN because of the Means he kept using.
Not sure about this particular case, but why should someone who is willing to dare *more* in the cause of good be less good?
It's probably an evil act to make a kid work in a coal mine until they get black lung too. I'd say doubly so when you have a cheap and disposable replacments available.Just stay evil and animate the corpse of the kid after he died ;-)
Then, Bam, helm of opposite alignment and back to good. Since it's more a descriptor/tag than something I would have trouble sleeping over/would be very hard for someone to convince me was wrong. I'll just hire a paladin to check me for evil every few months, if he finds it, helm and back to good.
Good cares for both good means AND good ends.
What happens when you're forced to choose between the two?
I don't know if the Operative was evil, just misguided. He thought that he wasn't a good enough person to live in the world he was creating for his superiors, when exactly the opposite was true - he was a better person than his bosses deserved to have working for them.
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I have not been able to see Demon's Heresy yet (my own order has not shipped), but the fallen crusaders were not intended to be "good" undead, but they were intended to be sympathetic. Subtle difference.
I am anxious to see how they turned out after development.
Dot for later.
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Negative energy might not be evil per-se, but it is literally the negation of life. If you give negative energy form and strength and the implements to harm the living, that's exactly what it will do. Uncontrolled mindless undead don't just stand around doing nothing; when they sense the living, they move to destroy it, because that's what their basic nature demands. Intelligent undead do worse than merely extinguishing life; in many cases, they spread unlife by causing those they kill to rise as more beings like themselves.
Positive energy is what 'fuels' all life and is literally the negation of undeath. If you give positive energy form and strength and the implements to harm the undead, that's exactly what it will do. Uncontrolled mindless living don' just stand around doing nothing; when they sense the undead, they move to destroy it, because that's what their basic nature demands. Intelligent living do worse than merely extinguishing undead; in many cases, they spread life by procreating and creating more beings like themselves.
See what I did there?
Your logic doesn't work very well, neither does Paizos. If you go read the planar traits for the Positive and Negative Energy planes, and you find they are both Major-dominant with their respective energy types. Then read what Major-Negative Dominant, and what Major-Positive Dominant does.
You'll find that being on the Negative Energy Plane kills all living creatures. However, you can protect yourself with spells like Death Ward.
You'll also find that the Positive Energy Plane simply kills anything that goes there, eventually. Why? Because everything gains fast healing, and then once they gain too many temporary hit points from the excess healing, they explode and die. Demons, Undead, Constructs, Golems, Humans, Elves, Dragons, Aberrations... everything can benefit from fast healing, and since everything can have fast healing, everything can be killed by the Positive Energy Plane.
Positive and Negative energy are simply opposites on the energy spectrum. Negative Energy creatures probably view Positive Energy creatures as evil, because they are anti-Negative Energy.
Neither should be labeled good or evil. If Positive Energy were good, then every Cure spell should have the [Good] descriptor; at the same time, every Inflict spell should have the [Evil] descriptor. [Edit] Not only that, but every living creature automatically has to be Good aligned and evil creatures can only be rare exceptions for story reasons.
Undead are labeled Evil in Golarion for no other reason than Pazio wants them to be evil. It's not because their powered by Negative Energy, or because animating a body prevents the body's soul from travelling on. It's simply because Paizo wants them to be evil.
Why do they want them to be evil? Because tradition. It's the same with Orcs (sorry Mikaze). Tradition has Orcs as being, basically, bloodthirsty, murdering marauders. Tradition has undead being mindless abominations against nature that seek out and destroy life at every opportunity.
That's what Paizo wants in their game and their world. That's fine, but there is no mechanical reason for why Undead are evil, it's just because Paizo wants them to be.
IIRC, he used to be LG. He dropped to LN because of the Means he kept using.Not sure about this particular case, but why should someone who is willing to dare *more* in the cause of good be less good?Good cares for both good means AND good ends.
Those who only care about good ends, but not good means, are Neutral, or even Evil. The Operative in the movie Serenity was also working towards good ends (a galaxy without sin), but was definitely Evil doing so.
No. Neutral characters do not care about good. Neutral characters advance the cause of Neutral. Neutral is NOT lazy good. Neutral is not good with an edge or good using darker means. Neutral is its own thing.
I'm not sure if this is a hard-and-fast rule, but literally every good undead being I've seen in the setting has been a ghost.
It is not a hard and fast rule. Somewhere James Jacobs has noted that there are other good undead. I may see if I can find the quote.
The thing is James doesn't want normal non-evil undead to be common. He wants it to be a good story when it crops up, and so he pushes back against anything that allows for undead to become non-evil en masse. I, personally, disagree with this. But, you know, I'm not in his position, and I understand where he's coming from.
Negative energy might not be evil per-se, but it is literally the negation of life. If you give negative energy form and strength and the implements to harm the living, that's exactly what it will do. Uncontrolled mindless undead don't just stand around doing nothing; when they sense the living, they move to destroy it, because that's what their basic nature demands. Intelligent undead do worse than merely extinguishing life; in many cases, they spread unlife by causing those they kill to rise as more beings like themselves.
Positive energy is what 'fuels' all life and is literally the negation of undeath. If you give positive energy form and strength and the implements to harm the undead, that's exactly what it will do. Uncontrolled mindless living don' just stand around doing nothing; when they sense the undead, they move to destroy it, because that's what their basic nature demands. Intelligent living do worse than merely extinguishing undead; in many cases, they spread life by procreating and creating more beings like themselves.
Tels more or less described exactly my problem with your point, Gnoll Bard, although I believe that your description is entirely what Paizo has in mind.
And, in truth, I can see it as logic.
The major problem is that Tels' response isn't correct.
Because...
Not all are malicious in their actions, but the simple fact of the matter is that positive energy sustains life and negative energy destroys it. And to bring a being into the world whose basic nature is only to kill and destroy can be said to be an evil act.
... is also incorrect, unless Positive Energy is also evil.
Carnivores: kill and devour living creatures.
Herbivores: kill and devour living plants.
Plants: leach the soil of useful nutrients that are necessary to sustain life.
Omnivores: everything that lives fears these because they kill and eat anything.
Positive Energy doesn't create life-generating machines... instead it creates a vicious feed-on-other-living-things machines. In some cases, undeath creates entirely self-sustaining creatures that need feed on nothing (liches, for example, or many incorporeal undead), while in others it creates creatures that can sustain on minimal life, comparatively (vampires, unless they can't drink the blood of non-sentient creatures or something anymore), and in others it creates ravenous monsters that extinguish souls (devourers).
In any event, Paizo has "fixed" the problem of undeath being not really evil by implying (although not outright stating) that undeath successfully steals the eternal soul of a living creature out of circulation, thus denying it's place in the afterlife. Which is about the worst thing possible for anything to be able to do, especially with formerly good creatures.
Of course, the Juju oracle got around that by animating them with Wendo (local spirits who were eager to do so) instead of stealing a soul, so, you know, I'm not really certain why that was ret-conned into being still evil in game-world-terms. But to each their own.
EDIT:
No. Neutral characters do not care about good. Neutral characters advance the cause of Neutral. Neutral is NOT lazy good. Neutral is not good with an edge or good using darker means. Neutral is its own thing.IIRC, he used to be LG. He dropped to LN because of the Means he kept using.Not sure about this particular case, but why should someone who is willing to dare *more* in the cause of good be less good?Good cares for both good means AND good ends.
Those who only care about good ends, but not good means, are Neutral, or even Evil. The Operative in the movie Serenity was also working towards good ends (a galaxy without sin), but was definitely Evil doing so.
Your definition of neutral is very narrow. Neutral is "all of the above". There are Active Neutral agents and Passive Neutral agents. Both exist. Paizo even recommends the Passive Neutral being the most common form, though Active Neutral is definitely still a thing.
Where does it 'imply' that undeath steals a soul out of normal circulation? As far as I can tell, undeath does nothing of the sort. Only very certain undead have anything to do with the person killed. A lich, is of course, out of the normal circulation until the phylactery is destroyed. Many incorporeal undead are the spawn or tormented soul of a living being, but once they have been put to rest, they return to the normal circulation.
Animating skeletons, or zombies, doesn't interfere with the soul in anyway. Hell, the Positive Energy Plane is the birthplace of all souls, so once a Skeleton is animated, you could say it now posseses a Negative Energy Soul.
Tels, it's implied in a non-core book. James Jabobs has clarified it on the forums (that's the reason Pharasma hates undeath) - which makes it Golarion canon -, but the printed implication comes from either Undead Revisited or Classic Horrors Revisited in a sidebar.
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Where does it 'imply' that undeath steals a soul out of normal circulation? As far as I can tell, undeath does nothing of the sort. Only very certain undead have anything to do with the person killed. A lich, is of course, out of the normal circulation until the phylactery is destroyed. Many incorporeal undead are the spawn or tormented soul of a living being, but once they have been put to rest, they return to the normal circulation.
Animating skeletons, or zombies, doesn't interfere with the soul in anyway. Hell, the Positive Energy Plane is the birthplace of all souls, so once a Skeleton is animated, you could say it now posseses a Negative Energy Soul.
Turning a body into a zombie *must* interfere with the soul in some way, because any person whose body has *ever* been turned into an undead creature cannot be returned to life without very powerful magic.
... is also incorrect, unless Positive Energy is also evil.
Carnivores: kill and devour living creatures.
Herbivores: kill and devour living plants.
Plants: leach the soil of useful nutrients that are necessary to sustain life.
Omnivores: everything that lives fears these because they kill and eat anything.
Positive Energy doesn't create life-generating machines...
In point of fact, that's exactly what it creates. When a prey animal dies, it feeds predators, scavengers, and decomposers, giving them life. The plant takes unliving elemental matter and turns it into a living thing which can then be sustainence for other living things.
Nothing eats the undead, and the undead don't need to eat. Creatures they kill become more undead, so that the corpse can no longer sustain life. They don't even poop and return nutrients to the soil. They're a dead-end in the food web, a nightmarish ecological disaster.
Plus, I'm willing to embrace enough moral relativism in my games to accept that "Good" is defined from the perspective of living beings, not unliving magical construct, intelligent though they may be.
Turning a body into a zombie *must* interfere with the soul in some way, because any person whose body has *ever* been turned into an undead creature cannot be returned to life without very powerful magic.Where does it 'imply' that undeath steals a soul out of normal circulation? As far as I can tell, undeath does nothing of the sort. Only very certain undead have anything to do with the person killed. A lich, is of course, out of the normal circulation until the phylactery is destroyed. Many incorporeal undead are the spawn or tormented soul of a living being, but once they have been put to rest, they return to the normal circulation.
Animating skeletons, or zombies, doesn't interfere with the soul in anyway. Hell, the Positive Energy Plane is the birthplace of all souls, so once a Skeleton is animated, you could say it now posseses a Negative Energy Soul.
That could just be, you know, the fact that negative energy infuses the body and only very powerful magic can create an entirely new body. Even reincarnation needs a bit of the body.
[Death] descriptor spells also prevent most magic from raising creatures from the dead. That doesn't make them evil or mean they interfere with the soul.
Heck, if you travel to the positive energy plane, it becomes extremely super-hard to raise you when you die there. Curiously, just as hard as if you'd died from undead or death descriptors... because you have no body.
That said, I'm kind of okay with that in a campaign-specific interpretation.
... is also incorrect, unless Positive Energy is also evil.
Carnivores: kill and devour living creatures.
Herbivores: kill and devour living plants.
Plants: leach the soil of useful nutrients that are necessary to sustain life.
Omnivores: everything that lives fears these because they kill and eat anything.
Positive Energy doesn't create life-generating machines...In point of fact, that's exactly what it creates. When a prey animal dies, it feeds predators, scavengers, and decomposers, giving them life. The plant takes unliving elemental matter and turns it into a living thing which can then be sustainence for other living things.
Nothing eats the undead, and the undead don't need to eat. Creatures they kill become more undead, so that the corpse can no longer sustain life. They don't even poop and return nutrients to the soil. They're a dead-end in the food web, a nightmarish ecological disaster.
Plus, I'm willing to embrace enough moral relativism in my games to accept that "Good" is defined from the perspective of living beings, not unliving magical construct, intelligent though they may be.
You have a very strange definition of "life generating machines" then, considering that everything thrives on the death of everything else. You know, similar to some undead.
One thing, though, is that,
a) how do you know that nothing eats undead and they remain forever?
- a) liches eventually become demi-liches, meaning the most of them turns to dust
- b) skeletons are often destroyed
- c) zombies are, by definition, rotting corpses
- - c-1) either they "magically regenerate" the rotting corpse, it's sustained in a perpetual state of rot, or they eventually fall apart
- d) the only thing that doesn't "rot" from what I'm aware of is the various incorporeals... and nothing I'm aware of prevents those corpses from joining the standard food-web
b) undead and eating
- b1) If undead don't "need" to eat means, this simply means that other things can live even if they exist.
- b2) If undead do eat, what is prevent them from pooping?
- - b2-correllary) if they poop, this may (or may not, we have no evicence either way) return nuetrients to the soil
- b3) any caster that achieves immortality and/or removes things from the material plane to other planes (including suffering effects such as bleeding from being hit by a sword) decreases the sum of substance in the physcial universe - that, certainly, is harmful as well, yet the plane shift spell doesn't have the evil descriptor
c) the above means they aren't necessarily a "dead end" in the food web
In any event, the entire notion that Undead are evil rests upon the idea that they are, at their core, murderous and destructive and thus opposed to life. My point was that they were no more "opposed to life" than positive-energy-fueled creatures are, because positive-energy-fueled creatures are also murderous and destructive by virtue of being in existence. I mean, we really up the level of entropy in the universe by our very existence. All that heat we generate! Dudes!
And any impact on the life-web of the universe is comparable to many, many other things that make the life-web go completely off-the-wall. One (called) creature that dies in the material plane means we suddenly have the physical universe "tainted" by that creature's essence (as well as "too much" total "material" in the Material). Makes it kind of an evil act to kill an evil creature in the material, because that just spreads physical evil and makes it more or less impossible to get rid of, unless you have a method of eradicating, say, all the blood spilled over a vast area.
And what about diamonds and Wishes, or, more on topic, Raise Dead or similar spells, speaking of? What happens to a diamond or diamonds that makes it no longer usable next time. It's "consumed"? What does that mean? What impact on reality does that have?
No, there are way too many questions to go with that interpretation... unless you specifically want to embrace a specific brand of moral relativism (which you're okay with, but which I'm not).
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You know, it's funny, if killing evil creatures called from other planes taints the world, the only way to fix that is to call good creatures and murder them.
It's totally not evil to kidnap and sacrifice angels to prevent the encroaching evil from destroying the world right? All for the greater good!
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the Wizard that happens to have the greater good of the world at heart, wonders to himself.
You know, it's funny, if killing evil creatures called from other planes taints the world, the only way to fix that is to call good creatures and murder them.
It's totally not evil to kidnap and sacrifice angels to prevent the encroaching evil from destroying the world right? All for the greater good!
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the Wizard that happens to have the greater good of the world at heart, wonders to himself.
Which is more or less my point. Holding any sort of a consistent metric to things (such as something's existence's impact on ecology as a whole) is going to get messy really fast... unless you hold a consistent metric to things.
If it's because "negative energy" then all negative energy is innately evil.
If it's because "murderous destructive entities" then all living entities are also evil.
If it's because "ecology gets out of whack" anything that calls and/or kills a called creature or plane shifts anywhere with anything they don't bring back is also evil.
(Some) Undead exist, think, and propagate, just like living creatures do. That they use the bodies of living creatures to do so is, frankly, no worse than nature (seriously: in real life, real parasites and fungi can be really disturbing, what with taking over their host's brains and all).
Only by holding an extremely inconsistent standard (or by placing very arbitrary non-RAW elements) can one hold a view that "undead are evil".
Which is what bothers me about it.
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As to the "raising them as undead keeps the souls from moving on" theory-- this would then mean that raising slain evil characters as skeletons and zombies is almost a requirement-- otherwise their soul moves on and eventually becomes a Devil, Demon, ect based on its sins.
NOT Animate Deading every evil creature you kill is an evil act!
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According to James Jacobs, animating mindless undead just means using a piece of the soul, not the whole thing, in the case of skeletons and zombies at least. So you are not preventing a soul from moving on, but rather causing discomfort to the soul.
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I haven't used them in my PF campaign, but I created a great number of non-evil undead for a Castles and Crusaders campaign. Starting with a CG Lich, and the undead wardens he placed in his tomb. I basically let the alignment fit the story, and used standard undead. The only real difference was that when the CG cleric turned the first batch of zombies he really couldn't figure out why they were all just standing around looking at him.
I did create a set of LN Doom Wardens. They are a troop of Dwarven warriors that basically received a payment of 100gp to guard something for eternity. Their payment tied neatly around their necks. They will guard their assigned ward unitl they are destroyed. The only way to destroy them is to take their gold and leave it on the ground exposed to the sun. When the sunlight hits it the DW will be destoryed. If the characters take the gold the DW will reconstitute and hunt down each and every one of those gold pieces killing whoever has even one in their posession. They will also hunt down what they were paid to guard, kill whoever posesses it, and return it to their guard chamber. They don't kill because they like to, they kill because that's the punishment for theft.
Heh, Nathaneal. :)
According to James Jacobs, animating mindless undead just means using a piece of the soul, not the whole thing, in the case of skeletons and zombies at least. So you are not preventing a soul from moving on, but rather causing discomfort to the soul.
Thanks, MMCJawa - I've not seen that, so that, at least, is good to know.
I love the idea, Ahlmzhad! Nice. :)
Tels, it's implied in a non-core book. James Jabobs has clarified it on the forums (that's the reason Pharasma hates undeath) - which makes it Golarion canon -, but the printed implication comes from either Undead Revisited or Classic Horrors Revisited in a sidebar.
Pharasma isn't good-aligned. Just because something annoys her doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Excessive charity probably gets on her nerves.
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Negative Energy can't be inherently evil, unless Positive Energy is inherently good. That would require all living creatures (which are alive due to Positive Energy) to be inherently good. Animals which are, by default, neutral, have to be good aligned. Drow have to be good aligned. Orcs have to be good aligned. Anything alive has to be good aligned.
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There is no negotiation. There is only "I am right, you are wrong" around here!
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Drow have to be good aligned. Orcs have to be good aligned. Anything alive has to be good aligned.So "all undead must be evil" crew, you want to negotiate? :)
Because, you know, this can end in nothing but "win" for Mikaze.
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Because, you know, this can end in nothing but "win" for Mikaze.Drow have to be good aligned. Orcs have to be good aligned. Anything alive has to be good aligned.So "all undead must be evil" crew, you want to negotiate? :)
That not true, negotiations can fall apart, orcs stay 'always evil' undead are never allowed to be good, and spoilers from Wrath of the Righteous could mysteriously pop up and Mikaze has no notice.
It could all go horribly, horribly wrong for Mikaze.
-Murphy
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Because, you know, this can end in nothing but "win" for Mikaze.Drow have to be good aligned. Orcs have to be good aligned. Anything alive has to be good aligned.So "all undead must be evil" crew, you want to negotiate? :)That not true, negotiations can fall apart, orcs stay 'always evil' undead are never allowed to be good, and spoilers from Wrath of the Righteous could mysteriously pop up and Mikaze has no notice.
It could all go horribly, horribly wrong for Mikaze.
-Murphy
()
If Arazni becomes corrupted and evil through her undeath, how can a run-of-the-mill non-demigod good person not be?
She didn't.
She became corrupted and evil through Geb's manipulation after her undeath.
Most people don't have Geb corrupting them.
EDIT: I mean, Gandalf is a demigod, but he was horrified of the One Ring. It was Frodo (and Bilbo before him) relatively mundane hobbits with a slight desire for adventure (well, sort of, in Bilbo's case) that actually resisted the Ring's influence for the longest, whereas other creatures succumbed much more quickly.
But more, the comparison between Arazni and others would be more akin to a comparison between someone with the One Ring and someone with any other ring in the world. The One Ring has a powerful corrupting influence attempting to turn you evil. Other rings do not.
In any event, if it's a campaign-specific thing... okay, I can roll with that. I get it, "Undeath is evil for 'Reasons'", that's fine. I don't love it, but it's okay.
But in a generic world, there are too many holes to patch. Sometimes in specific campaign settings there are too.
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Because, you know, this can end in nothing but "win" for Mikaze.Drow have to be good aligned. Orcs have to be good aligned. Anything alive has to be good aligned.So "all undead must be evil" crew, you want to negotiate? :)That not true, negotiations can fall apart, orcs stay 'always evil' undead are never allowed to be good, and spoilers from Wrath of the Righteous could mysteriously pop up and Mikaze has no notice.
It could all go horribly, horribly wrong for Mikaze.
-Murphy
Never tell me the odds. [/solo vest]
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As I recall, after Han said that, he flew into an asteroid field and subsequently wound up in the stomach of a giant space worm.Never tell me the odds. [/solo vest]Because, you know, this can end in nothing but "win" for Mikaze.Drow have to be good aligned. Orcs have to be good aligned. Anything alive has to be good aligned.So "all undead must be evil" crew, you want to negotiate? :)That not true, negotiations can fall apart, orcs stay 'always evil' undead are never allowed to be good, and spoilers from Wrath of the Righteous could mysteriously pop up and Mikaze has no notice.
It could all go horribly, horribly wrong for Mikaze.
-Murphy
Then one of his close friends betrayed him, turning him over to an evil empire and he got frozen in carbonite.
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Then one of his close friends betrayed him, turning him over to an evil empire and he got frozen in carbonite.As I recall, after Han said that, he flew into an asteroid field and subsequently wound up in the stomach of a giant space worm.Never tell me the odds. [/solo vest]Because, you know, this can end in nothing but "win" for Mikaze.Drow have to be good aligned. Orcs have to be good aligned. Anything alive has to be good aligned.So "all undead must be evil" crew, you want to negotiate? :)That not true, negotiations can fall apart, orcs stay 'always evil' undead are never allowed to be good, and spoilers from Wrath of the Righteous could mysteriously pop up and Mikaze has no notice.
It could all go horribly, horribly wrong for Mikaze.
-Murphy
Yeah, but eventually he got better and starred in the Indiana Jones trilogy and like ten different cuts of Blade Runner. :P
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Yeah, but eventually he got better and starred in the Indiana Jones trilogy and like ten different cuts of Blade Runner. :PThen one of his close friends betrayed him, turning him over to an evil empire and he got frozen in carbonite.As I recall, after Han said that, he flew into an asteroid field and subsequently wound up in the stomach of a giant space worm.Never tell me the odds. [/solo vest]Because, you know, this can end in nothing but "win" for Mikaze.Drow have to be good aligned. Orcs have to be good aligned. Anything alive has to be good aligned.So "all undead must be evil" crew, you want to negotiate? :)That not true, negotiations can fall apart, orcs stay 'always evil' undead are never allowed to be good, and spoilers from Wrath of the Righteous could mysteriously pop up and Mikaze has no notice.
It could all go horribly, horribly wrong for Mikaze.
-Murphy
Maybe the flash freezing from carbonite is what really allowed Indy to survive a nuclear blast, not some refrigerator. For all we know, he's basically a mutant now.
As far as I'm aware, Gods are completely incapable of entering the Positive Energy plane. It's possible they are incapable of entering the Negative Energy plane too.
Team Neutral likes to balance things out in the universe. Just look at how the Aeons operate.
Here's my take on the issues. What's the difference between animated objects/constructs and mindless undead? It's that when you don't give orders to the animated objects it does nothing, when you don't give orders to the undead, it tries to kill the living.
Mindless yes, but not without desire, specifically the desire to kill the living. Any time they show up in writing, the first thing they do when they encounter the living is to try to kill, unless their creator, or whoever is commanding them, orders them not to. That's what makes them inherently evil, and why only undead with a mind could be capable of becoming neutral (or even good), the ability to consciously overcome that desire.
Here's my take on the issues. What's the difference between animated objects/constructs and mindless undead? It's that when you don't give orders to the animated objects it does nothing, when you don't give orders to the undead, it tries to kill the living.
Mindless yes, but not without desire, specifically the desire to kill the living. Any time they show up in writing, the first thing they do when they encounter the living is to try to kill, unless their creator, or whoever is commanding them, orders them not to. That's what makes them inherently evil, and why only undead with a mind could be capable of becoming neutral (or even good), the ability to consciously overcome that desire.
That's a really interesting take on why the spell Animate Dead would be evil and why it would make the undead themselves evil.
It's a great setting-specific thing.
It still is entirely irritating that the Juju Oracle's Spirit Vessels ability was ret-conned out of existence.
I'll look into this more late (short on time at the moment), but I've got a few thoughts I want to research before speaking on.
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Here's my take on the issues. What's the difference between animated objects/constructs and mindless undead? It's that when you don't give orders to the animated objects it does nothing, when you don't give orders to the undead, it tries to kill the living.
Mindless yes, but not without desire, specifically the desire to kill the living. Any time they show up in writing, the first thing they do when they encounter the living is to try to kill, unless their creator, or whoever is commanding them, orders them not to. That's what makes them inherently evil, and why only undead with a mind could be capable of becoming neutral (or even good), the ability to consciously overcome that desire.
Interesting concept, yet the same can be said for an Owlbear or any of the Slimes and Jellies, or any of the less intelligent plant creatures-- yet they are all listed as neutral.
I still hold that non-sentient creatures cannot have an alignment. Is the River evil because it tries to drown anything that swims in it?
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I have a feeling that Mikaze would really love the death god in my setting.
Or at least, one of them ;)
Here's my take on the issues. What's the difference between animated objects/constructs and mindless undead? It's that when you don't give orders to the animated objects it does nothing, when you don't give orders to the undead, it tries to kill the living.
Mindless yes, but not without desire, specifically the desire to kill the living. Any time they show up in writing, the first thing they do when they encounter the living is to try to kill, unless their creator, or whoever is commanding them, orders them not to. That's what makes them inherently evil, and why only undead with a mind could be capable of becoming neutral (or even good), the ability to consciously overcome that desire.
Interesting concept, yet the same can be said for an Owlbear or any of the Slimes and Jellies, or any of the less intelligent plant creatures-- yet they are all listed as neutral.
I still hold that non-sentient creatures cannot have an alignment. Is the River evil because it tries to drown anything that swims in it?
The only exception I make is lemures (the lowly devil soul-shell, not lemurs the fuzzy animal) but only because they are literally created out of the evil soul-stuff that's created from a lifetime of evil choices.
In such a case, I can see KtA's explanation working. But I would suggest, then, that there are reasons that good creatures would undergo similar actions (mostly on themselves, though, depending on the severity of the situation, it could be done to someone else who was willing).