Only in the case of relatively unintelligent monsters (creatures with an Intelligence of 2 or lower are almost never anything other than neutral) and planar monsters (outsiders with alignments other than those listed are unusual and typically outcasts from their kind) is the listed alignment relatively unchangeable.
:)
Undead aren't just evil because they have the Evil subtype, they're evil because they desire the death of the living. Mindless, but not without desire.The Tarrasque is picked on because he has a desire to eat everything and remains N. The fast zombie assassin vine just breaks the universes laws.
Another thing is that your crafting excuses to explain what someone already placed in the universe.
when an undead, even a mindless one, has no orders it kills anything nearby.Erm... If its under someone else's control it doesn't.
That's exactly the point though, without that control it's a mindless murder-machine that attempts to kill anything it sees. That's what makes it evil.
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Honestly, while I don't hate the alignment system, I do think it sometimes leads to very silly things. I am perfectly ok with some spells making you a complete monster just by using them. But I've always dislike the "negative energy equal evil" that 3.5 and by extension PF have going for it, since negative energy is just another aspect of the 3.5/PF cosmos, that is opposed to positive energy. Presumably the cosmos needs both to function, so why is using negative energy to make some bodies without souls in it move around "Evil". Creepy? Sure.
I personally think the spells should be amended to say that creating sentient undead is an evil act, while mindless undead are potentially tools to be used, depends on the intent of the caster...
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It would take some house ruling, but I had a story concept for a non-evil Necromancer.
The concept is a necromancer who serves as a cleric or inquisitor of Pharasma or another "judgment after death" deities (potentially even Sarenrae as part of the "redemption" aspect). Essentially, their job is to give the dead a chance to atone for their misdeeds before facing final judgment. Basically, they could raise recently dead NPCs (say, within the same time window as Raise Dead) for a limited time to serve them. How long the undead remain around depends on the GM house rule, there would be restrictions on what the necromancer could command the undead to do (so commanding the undead to commit an evil act would either end the spell or cause the undead to turn on the necromancer).
It sounds like that story concept could fit with the White Necromancer class pretty well.
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That's exactly the point though, without that control it's a mindless murder-machine that attempts to kill anything it sees. That's what makes it evil.Undead aren't just evil because they have the Evil subtype, they're evil because they desire the death of the living. Mindless, but not without desire.The Tarrasque is picked on because he has a desire to eat everything and remains N. The fast zombie assassin vine just breaks the universes laws.
Another thing is that your crafting excuses to explain what someone already placed in the universe.
when an undead, even a mindless one, has no orders it kills anything nearby.Erm... If its under someone else's control it doesn't.
EXCEPT, of course, that evil is a moral choice. If it has no choice in the matter ... if it's such a slave to its instincts that it is incapable of making a decision about the matter ... then it can't be evil. It didn't choose its path.
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On a side note, that's a big reason why turning a paladin would be really dumb on the part of an evil vampire, since if the Paladin ever gets out from under the vampire's control (such as s/he gets to many levels and breaks the HD limit, or the vampire is slain) then s/he just created the worst nightmare for any evil vampires (a vampire paladin vampire slayer; all the vampire slaying power of the paladin combined with immunity to the vampires' worst attacks).
My current campaign has an order of vampiric undead hunters exactly because being undead makes you immune to a lot of scary undead powers. They were created by the goddess of death who prefers having a few loyal vampires running around to an infestation of ghouls, shadows, wights, wraiths, etc.
Yeah, at some point you might turn neutral to good again, provided you can find sustenance in a non-evil way.
Ring of Sustenance, baby. Or just go hunting; nobody said it had to be human blood. Animal blood is the same thing, and it's no different than eating a steak ... possibly MORE merciful, since the creature doesn't have to die for it.
As I understood Ashiels argument was that you'd instantly go back to good because the game constantly "checks" what actions you have performed and this results in becoming good again without making any more good acts.
Well, yeah, it kind of does that. There's no reason you'd turn evil automatically anyway; you did nothing wrong. Or is this one of those 'blame the victim' things?
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Ring of Sustenance, baby. Or just go hunting; nobody said it had to be human blood. Animal blood is the same thing, and it's no different than eating a steak ... possibly MORE merciful, since the creature doesn't have to die for it.
Yeah, at some point you might turn neutral to good again, provided you can find sustenance in a non-evil way.
Ring of Sustenance specifically doesn't work according to Blood of the Night since it's a supernatural rather than simply physical hunger.
Animal blood is described as "at GM discretion," but even if you have to consume sentient blood, vampire blood drain doesn't have to be fatal and if you can patch up the con damage with Lesser Restoration it's not even damaging.
Ring of Sustenance, baby. Or just go hunting; nobody said it had to be human blood. Animal blood is the same thing, and it's no different than eating a steak ... possibly MORE merciful, since the creature doesn't have to die for it.
Yeah, at some point you might turn neutral to good again, provided you can find sustenance in a non-evil way.Ring of Sustenance specifically doesn't work according to Blood of the Night since it's a supernatural rather than simply physical hunger.
Okay, so not part of the PFRPG rules.
Animal blood is described as "at GM discretion," but even if you have to consume sentient blood, vampire blood drain doesn't have to be fatal and if you can patch up the con damage with Lesser Restoration it's not even damaging.Lesser Restoration unfortunately does not restore ability drain, just ability damage. To restore Drain, you'd need Restoration, although there is a gold cost attached. Now, if you are in an adventuring party that regularly kills sentient beings, you could probably manage by just sipping from the already-deceased, or from the people you were going to kill anyways (I'd rule that such an adventuring party would probably be evil anyways, but that's a subject for another thread). Otherwise, animal blood is probably your best bet unless you have access to other magic.
Create Food and Water can create meat, so you could potentially use that, but it isn't clear how much blood it contains...
If you are powerful enough, the fastest source of vampire food may be an incapacitated Tarrasque. The Tarrasque is immune to ability damage, but not ability drain. So, find a way to inflict wisdom drain on it until it faints. It won't die, since you haven't wished/miracled its death. Now, you can drain as much constitution as you want. It won't regenerated the ability drain, but it also won't die because the monster entry says so:P
It's a good thing that vampires don't deal ability drain then, huh?
Blood Drain (Su): A vampire can suck blood from a grappled opponent; if the vampire establishes or maintains a pin, it drains blood, dealing 1d4 points of Constitution damage. The vampire heals 5 hit points or gains 5 temporary hit points for 1 hour (up to a maximum number of temporary hit points equal to its full normal hit points) each round it drains blood.
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Actually, in my monday game, there are a pair of vampires traveling with the PCs (which include 2 NPC templar and 1 PC paladin templar) out of a sort of quest necessity. The Paladin has been allowing them to feed on him to sate their hungers, since he can simply heal the ability damage each day with lesser restoration.
This is a thing since he tried to heal one of the vampires with Lay on Hands at one point to try to remove an apparent scar she had (it was just a wound that was still fast healing) and kind of melted her face off, and she failed her save vs hunger and tried to eat him. He grappled her and tied her up without harming her until she calmed down, and then he was like "Oh, crap, I didn't know she was a vampire. Um...well I don't hate her so..."
They don't entirely trust the vampires, but the two vampires in the party tend to get all the blood they need during their adventures and from the party during their downtime.
That...has got to be one of the most random changes from 3.5.
It makes sense, of course, since the body of most animals (including humans) can replenish blood over time.
Given that, you don't even need (lesser) restoration, since ability damage can be healed naturally:)
I think it's because the one from 3.5 is effectively an error. The ability is called blood drain (meaning to syphon) but it's written mechanically as drain (meaning permanent ability damage), which as you point out doesn't make any sense at all.
Even still, splat-material aside, vampires have no requirement to feed on sentient creatures. An ox is 15 gp and is loaded with Constitution. :P
Of course, this is what also draws big "evil here" arrows over the heads of most of the vampires the party has encountered so far. That is, the fact that most of them feed on humanoids and other sentient creatures out of their own enjoyment. Even still, most of those more civilized of these vampires don't tend to kill their victims (it could draw too much unwanted attention).
One of the PCs severely ticked off and impressed the lord of a city's vampire population however, so I imagine that they will soon be encountering him again, on less amiable terms. :P
On a side note, I use a toned down version of the vampire template for most vampires (vampire spawn doesn't do it for me) and an improved version (more akin to the normal PF template) for the major vampires; and so my party is only 4th level at the moment. It's been fun though.
My Thoughts (sorry if they lack structure; having a hard time articulating this stuff): Living creatures can be just as dangerous as undead creatures, but what sets undead apart, with the exception of vampires and ghouls, is that they have no need for sustenance. A tiger kills so that it can survive (and so it can feed its young). An undead kills because it is compelled to do so. It has no physical need to kill; it does so for one reason and one reason only--because it is a creature fueled by negative energy. As such, it seeks to annihilate all living creatures. Light and dark, positive and negative, these are opposed forces. Undead do not acclimate to their environment, reaching a balance with the organisms that live there, because that is not their nature. They destroy everything that it is in their power to destroy. That is why they are [evil] and that is why animating them is [evil]. Spellcasters that decide to create undead are doing so with knowledge that what they are creating is unnatural and opposed to all of creation; were their control over these creatures to fail, the undead would revert to their "nature" (killing indiscriminately and without purpose).
Then you ask yourself "Well why does the creature have to be filled with negative energy" or "Why does negative energy make it kill" or how about "Does the undead know what it does or why? Can the undead truly be blamed for its actions?" and possibly "Does negative energy self propogate? Have I found a source of endless energy? Can I harness this?" or maybe "Wait... Why can't I just use another energy?".
All good questions. At least one of which leads to undead being put in hamster wheels for endless energy... maybe.
You could make variant undead in your campaign that are fueled by positive energy, but they would be the exception (see the "Deathless" listed in the Book of Exalted Deeds for a good example of this sort of thing). I don't think they would be compelled to kill the living, nor would they be evil, so creating them would be morally neutral (or even good, if the risen undead are good-aligned).
Edit: Oh, and to answer some of your questions:
Sentient undead, on the other hand, have some amount of free will, but are ultimately enslaved to their nature, and so are a bit tragic. They can try to resist their impulses, but for how long? They're still evil, as they are tainted by their undeath (negative energy). Their only chance for redemption is find a way to reverse their transformation or to die (at which point they can be judged for their intentions; Pharasma, I would hope, would absolve them of the sins that they committed as undead--assuming they regret these actions--but, as I'm not a Paizo writer, I cannot say for certain).
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I hate deathless because corpses powered by positive energy are called living. Also it further pushes the "this neutral aligned energy is good and that neutral aligned energy is evil".
It's like trying to say the elemental plane of fire is good and the elemental plane of water is evil, because...just because...
In my opinion, positive and negative energy are unaligned forces, much like gravity; they simply exist as opposed forces (whereas positive energy seeds life in the multiverse, negative energy destroys it).
Living creatures are born from the wellspring of positive energy and possess near infinite form. As such, they possess many different outlooks; each individual species has a psychology all their own, and so can be of any moral alignment.
Undead, however, are created by infusing the dead with negative energy--negative energy that compels them to annihilate the living (thereby quelling the spark of positive energy they carry in their living, breathing forms). Intelligent undead may attempt to fight these impulses, but their new forms/psyches are different, meaning that no matter how hard they resist, they will always possess a conflicted nature. Whatever evolved morality they once possessed is gone, replaced by a "hunger" to defile life.
This also explains the revulsion most living creatures experience when confronted with undead. They are horrifying, unnatural creatures that are just "wrong".
So long as morality is defined in any meaningful way as having to do with the well-being of "living" creatures, undead will always be evil.
Non-evil Necromancer: Don't create undead. There are plenty of useful necromancy spells that aren't concerned with animating the dead. Taking control of undead that already exist in the world, too, might be overlooked, so long as they are disposed of properly when you're finished with them. Still a bit shady, but passably neutral at that point.
Well there is a way around it. Sort of.
Make simulacrii of zombies. No more control issues.. but it also means not having endless hordes. More like one or two really big "zombies".
And lets face it, a necromancer lacking zombies just isnt a real necromancer.
In my opinion
Gotta' wonder, how far does opinion go with this sort of thing.
This is a fantasy game. We have a rulebook, but there's a lot left to the imagination.
Non-evil Necromancer: Don't create undead. There are plenty of useful necromancy spells that aren't concerned with animating the dead. Taking control of undead that already exist in the world, too, might be overlooked, so long as they are disposed of properly when you're finished with them. Still a bit shady, but passably neutral at that point.
Having played a Gravewalker Witch (Probably the best "necromancer" option in PF),though admittedly I was pure N and a follower of Nethys to boot, being a non-evil Necromancer does not mean you have to avoid making undead. It just means you have to cast some [Good] spells to balance you out. Its really pretty simple to be a non-evil necromancer, even I wish Animate Dead (or most other spells) where tagged with an alignment.
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"The living have plenty of champions. Someone has to focus on helping the dead and the restless."
The only hang-up is whether to go Grave-bound with a ghost companion or vanilla WN.
Sounds like a cool concept! imagine if your Grave-Bound white necromancer picks a skeleton or maybe zombie for his undead companion and your DM let it be a horse skeleton or zombie! What a cool mount for such a character!
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Do you want the [evil] descriptor removed from the spells entirely?
Frankly, yes.
Good. That's about the only way I can see reconciling the issue, so it seems like a valid houserule. At least we don't disagree that, as written, those spells are soul-tainting and thus probably shouldn't be ignored.
Actually, that is the whole point in contention.
We (ie me, Zhayne, Mikaze, Marc, and everyone who forked out for the White Necromancer pdf) do disagree on that point.A skeleton or zombie is an unaligned inanimate object, moved by an unaligned magical force.
It should no more be an evil act to create one, as it would be to have an unseen servant spell effect in attendance, or to create a dancing candlestick to greet your dinner guests.
Or a comedy snowman, to entertain your baby sister (for a more current Disney analogy).