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I guess that i wouldn´t bother so much about PCs creating undead if it woulnd´t be a so careless act without consequences in the game. Because creating undead doesn´t exist in real life, people don´t give the deepness of its evil as much as killing children or puppies.
When Horror Adventures cames out, i ll attach some corruption to creating undead in my campaing in a ravenloft-like consequence os meddling with the other side darkness.
Edit: Paizo should create a spell for necromancers thats let the creation of animate objects with necromancy. And create two new monsters: animated bones and animated dead body, so people can sort of mess with pseudo-like undeads.
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Edit: Paizo should create a spell for necromancers thats let the creation of animate objects with necromancy. And create two new monsters: animated bones and animated dead body, so people can sort of mess with pseudo-like undeads.
To be honest, animate object should just actually be a necromancy spell. Since it likely is using positive energy to animate the object (there was even a monster based around using positive energy to animate all the objects around them constantly in MM1).
Edit: Then again, healing should also be necromancy... And despite many developers saying they'd prefer to change it, they can't because of all the little things they'd need to edit.
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Edit: Then again, healing should also be necromancy... And despite many developers saying they'd prefer to change it, they can't because of all the little things they'd need to edit.
And, you know, raising the dead!
(Which it is in my games...)
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Technically golems involve elemental spirits, which aren't quite the same thing as souls.I know it isn't as powerful or cheap, but you could use Animate Object and Permanency to animate a corpse.
No alignment restriction there.
:D
Wanna know what actually involves enslaving souls?
Golems.
>Implying that enslaving elemental souls is totally okay, but doing the same thing to a human's is monstrous.
Racist. >:O
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And, you know, raising the dead!
(Which it is in my games...)
Well, resurrection is just very powerful healing.
Technically golems involve elemental spirits, which aren't quite the same thing as souls.
No, elementals are literally souls since they're outsiders.
Technically golems involve elemental spirits, which aren't quite the same thing as souls.
While in general (and real life) it's a distinction I agree with, in game terms, it seems a mighty distinction.
"Oh, no, I didn't take the heart. That would be awful. No, I took the lungs!"
EDIT: I am so daggum ninja'd. XD
Outsiders from the elemental planes aren't made from souls
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Outsiders from the elemental planes aren't made from souls
Outsiders: "Unlike most living creatures, an outsider does not have a dual nature—its soul and body form one unit."
An elemental's body is literally its soul.
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I thought there was a distinction? Am I remembering something from previous editions?
Objection withdrawn, I guess. Though I do still think there's a difference, it's not as clear as I thought.
In previous editions, elementals were their own creature type, but they did share the "Their Body is their Soul-ness" and "made of planar matter" with Outsiders, so paizo decided to make elemental a subtype of outsider.
I do wish they made native outsiders fey though...
I also thought elementals had intelligence and souls...
Binding them into golems and such seems pretty rude to me, if not evil.
I wouldn't like being stripped from my home plane and forced to do some pansy wizards bidding.
It's just arbitrary. As written neither animate dead nor create undead interact with the dead creature in any way other than manipulating their corpse.
I'm glad that it's not in the spell descriptions, that way i don't have to explain it away or house rule it for my setting where there is an entire non-evil society that bases their economy on undead workforce in a similar way to how modern real world societies use robotics.
I also thought elementals had intelligence and souls...
Yep, even get up to human levels of intelligence as they develop.
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I also thought elementals had intelligence and souls...
Binding them into golems and such seems pretty rude to me, if not evil.
I wouldn't like being stripped from my home plane and forced to do some pansy wizards bidding.
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What you do as an undead has no effect on your life before you became undead.
That line of reasoning would have interesting implications for Arazni, unless she falls under the 'soul embraces the change' exception... but from a practical standpoint that's something only Pharasma (aka 'the GM') could possibly judge.
On the other hand, the 'after death' distinction implies that a 'helm of opposite alignment' type situation WOULD count... even though the change was against the soul's will.
To me these seem more like the 'edge cases' which need to be carefully adjudicated... weighing the length of time and degree of dedication the soul gave to each alignment. A forced alignment change might be reason to give less weight to actions after that, but not to ignore them entirely. Similarly, the 'final alignment' might get more weight, but doesn't wipe everything else away. A good child who then spent thousands of years as an 'attic whisperer' committing unspeakable atrocities would be judged evil in my view. As would a high level anti-paladin who sought out and put on a helm of opposite alignment days before dying of a slow wasting disease.
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Outsiders from the elemental planes aren't made from soulsOutsiders: "Unlike most living creatures, an outsider does not have a dual nature—its soul and body form one unit."
An elemental's body is literally its soul.
I've always wondered how this is supposed to interact with powers like possession or mind swapping. For simplicity's sake I'll assume they work normally, but I'm not sure you should be able to possess an outsider and take control of its body, suppressing its soul/mind, when they have this sort of unified nature.
But it's much easier to infiltrate Hell or Heaven if you can use the Occult Adventures Greater Possession spell on an outsider to walk you through check points, so forget I brought it up.
Outsiders from the elemental planes aren't made from soulsOutsiders: "Unlike most living creatures, an outsider does not have a dual nature—its soul and body form one unit."
An elemental's body is literally its soul.
I've always wondered how this is supposed to interact with powers like possession or mind swapping. For simplicity's sake I'll assume they work normally, but I'm not sure you should be able to possess an outsider and take control of its body, suppressing its soul/mind, when they have this sort of unified nature.
But it's much easier to infiltrate Hell or Heaven if you can use the Occult Adventures Greater Possession spell on an outsider to walk you through check points, so forget I brought it up.
Meh, if the spell says you can do it, do it.
There's nothing in the GOlem descriptions that indicate the spirits being bound into the golems are INITIALLY unwilling.
Indeed, if they can be bound, it implies they are 'bodiless', and you are Giving Them A Body.
Given that outsiders have a MUCH different perspective on time and duty, what you are doing from their perspective MIGHT very well be giving them 'form and purpose'.
It's the weakness of the process and vessels that cause them to go berserk and out of control, as conflicts in command and purpose build up and result in mental short circuits until brought back under control again.
But making undead clearly has the Evil descriptor, and results in enslavement and unwilling compulsion to being returned or made into something you don't want to be. IT's a different animal.
So, until we know if golems are actually enslaved, or if they choose to be bound; and the 'loss of control' is actually rebellion vs imperfections in the process, we don't know if golems are actually 'slaves' or perfectly happy to be given bodies and a purpose instead of formless entities.
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As for ghosts, most such arise spontaneously out of their own desires, and are literally souls that 'don't pass on.' Very, very few of them are Good, and the longer they fail to pass on, the more their alignment dips down, or the weaker they become (like in CoCT). Resisting the call of the afterlife is nOt a Good Thing, after all. Even most well-meaning ones end up being Neutral and harsher in life most of the time, and could well dip to Evil where they consider resolution of their mortal affairs more important then ANYTHING else the living might want to do (also a trope of many undead).
Indeed, they might as well just refer to 'good' undead as 'spirits' and not undead at all, and not something that can be created or bound.
But created undead, and people who CHOOSE to become undead before death? That's universally an Evil choice, by the rules of the game.
Having flavor text that warps the alignment rules creates inconsistency when it comes to play. Hence, no juju oracles (only) getting undead armies, and no paladins worshipping evil gods. That's enforcing the rules of the setting, where someone was trying to bend them and put their own stamp on things (and its difficult to break those early mistakes and get back to consistency).
This is especially difficult when you're dealing with Good, because everyone wants to be the one who introduces 'corruption' into the 'supposedly good'. Hence, NG Andoran and the basically LE Lumber Consortium, which they've been slowly trying to roll back and say "Yes, there actually IS a NG country in Golarion!" and ditto the elves ("Yes, they actually DO tend to CG, not CN/Evil!) and ditto Taldan/Saranrae ("No, they didn't actually totally outlaw a NG goddess, just cults that were definitely not NG but claimed they were acting in Her Name).
==Aelryinth
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There's nothing in the GOlem descriptions that indicate the spirits being bound into the golems are INITIALLY unwilling.
Indeed, if they can be bound, it implies they are 'bodiless', and you are Giving Them A Body.
Given that outsiders have a MUCH different perspective on time and duty, what you are doing from their perspective MIGHT very well be giving them 'form and purpose'.
It's the weakness of the process and vessels that cause them to go berserk and out of control, as conflicts in command and purpose build up and result in mental short circuits until brought back under control again.
But making undead clearly has the Evil descriptor, and results in enslavement and unwilling compulsion to being returned or made into something you don't want to be. IT's a different animal.
So, until we know if golems are actually enslaved, or if they choose to be bound; and the 'loss of control' is actually rebellion vs imperfections in the process, we don't know if golems are actually 'slaves' or perfectly happy to be given bodies and a purpose instead of formless entities.
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Interesting point of view. If they were willing, they wouldn't be bound. They would hosted, or housed... bound implies restraint.
As for them going berserk, I've always thought of it as them breaking free of being bound, and seeking revenge on the one who bound them... it doesn't explicitly say this, but that's how I have read it.
*shrugs*
It's all fluff really, creating undead is evil, creating golems isn't. Probably should be though.
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thread of the year 2008
Creative Director
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What you do as an undead has no effect on your life before you became undead.That line of reasoning would have interesting implications for Arazni, unless she falls under the 'soul embraces the change' exception... but from a practical standpoint that's something only Pharasma (aka 'the GM') could possibly judge.
On the other hand, the 'after death' distinction implies that a 'helm of opposite alignment' type situation WOULD count... even though the change was against the soul's will.
To me these seem more like the 'edge cases' which need to be carefully adjudicated... weighing the length of time and degree of dedication the soul gave to each alignment. A forced alignment change might be reason to give less weight to actions after that, but not to ignore them entirely. Similarly, the 'final alignment' might get more weight, but doesn't wipe everything else away. A good child who then spent thousands of years as an 'attic whisperer' committing unspeakable atrocities would be judged evil in my view. As would a high level anti-paladin who sought out and put on a helm of opposite alignment days before dying of a slow wasting disease.
On Golarion, it's possible to be turned into a lich against your will. Once you BECOME a lich, how you handle that situation can indeed have repercussions on your soul. Arazni is a relatively unique character in a lot of ways.
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Since it hasn't been quoted yet:
You can resurrect someone killed by a death effect or someone who has been turned into an undead creature and then destroyed.
The same goes for miracle, true resurrection, and wish. Trapping someone with animate dead so they cannot be resurrected is essentially equivalent to trapping their soul, and is a common tactic in high level play.
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Technically golems involve elemental spirits, which aren't quite the same thing as souls.I know it isn't as powerful or cheap, but you could use Animate Object and Permanency to animate a corpse.
No alignment restriction there.
:D
Wanna know what actually involves enslaving souls?
Golems.
Sorry, elementals are sentient outsiders. Outsiders are souls.
Unlike most living creatures, an outsider does not have a dual nature—its soul and body form one unit. When an outsider is slain, no soul is set loose. Spells that restore souls to their bodies, such as raise dead, reincarnate, and resurrection, don't work on an outsider. It takes a different magical effect, such as limited wish, wish, miracle, or true resurrection to restore it to life. An outsider with the native subtype can be raised, reincarnated, or resurrected just as other living creatures can be.
You are literally enslaving a spirit, a soul.
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Interesting point of view. If they were willing, they wouldn't be bound. They would hosted, or housed... bound implies restraint.
As for them going berserk, I've always thought of it as them breaking free of being bound, and seeking revenge on the one who bound them... it doesn't explicitly say this, but that's how I have read it.
*shrugs*
It's all fluff really, creating undead is evil, creating golems isn't. Probably should be though.
Actually you're right. The only golem that an elemental can usurp some control from is the flesh golem (likely because corpses aren't great prisons for souls) and this is what berserk says.
Berserk (Ex) When a flesh golem enters combat, there is a cumulative 1% chance each round that its elemental spirit breaks free and the golem goes berserk. The uncontrolled golem goes on a rampage, attacking the nearest living creature or smashing some object smaller than itself if no creature is within reach, then moving on to spread more destruction. The golem's creator, if within 60 feet, can try to regain control by speaking firmly and persuasively to the golem, which requires a DC 19 Charisma check. It takes 1 minute of inactivity by the golem to reset the golem's berserk chance to 0%.
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Technically golems involve elemental spirits, which aren't quite the same thing as souls.I know it isn't as powerful or cheap, but you could use Animate Object and Permanency to animate a corpse.
No alignment restriction there.
:D
Wanna know what actually involves enslaving souls?
Golems.
Sorry, elementals are sentient outsiders. Outsiders are souls.
Unlike most living creatures, an outsider does not have a dual nature—its soul and body form one unit. When an outsider is slain, no soul is set loose. Spells that restore souls to their bodies, such as raise dead, reincarnate, and resurrection, don't work on an outsider. It takes a different magical effect, such as limited wish, wish, miracle, or true resurrection to restore it to life. An outsider with the native subtype can be raised, reincarnated, or resurrected just as other living creatures can be.You are literally enslaving a spirit, a soul.
Binding a soul? Yes.
Enslaving a sentient soul? Maybe.
After all -
Enslaving a humanoid? Evil.
Hitching a horse to a wagon? Not evil.
Where do elementals fall on that spectrum? *shrug*
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As written, yeah, creating golems should be an evil act. I would prefer instead to revise them away from using soul enslavement to power them up, frankly... but it is what it is. House Rule as you wish.
I've always kind of liked how golems are different from animated objects, personally.
My pc's have freed many an elemental spirit from bondage, and sometimes even encountered them later!
Imagine the gratitude of a greater elemental of earth... oh yes, gems and precious metals...
Glorious. :D
Since it hasn't been quoted yet:
You can resurrect someone killed by a death effect or someone who has been turned into an undead creature and then destroyed.The same goes for miracle, true resurrection, and wish. Trapping someone with animate dead so they cannot be resurrected is essentially equivalent to trapping their soul, and is a common tactic in high level play.
OTOH, as was pointed out earlier:Resurrection and true resurrection can affect undead creatures. These spells turn undead creatures back into the living creatures they were before becoming undead.As I see it, you can cast (True) Resurrection on the undead creature, returning it to life, but you can't Resurrect the person otherwise (with True Res or from a piece of the body.)
I'd assume further that the person's soul would determine whether it wanted the Resurrection to work or not. Those who'd become undead of their own free will probably wouldn't be willing to be resurrected. Most of the others probably would.
No, no. See, that's why you turn them into skeletons, command the skeleton to "walk through this gate and attack nothing" that's a one-way to a demiplane of dead magic filled with water you created.
(Once the demiplane is full of your former enemies, you later turn the gate into a creature somehow, and imprison the creature somewhere really remote and inconvenient to get to, and then do it again. Or, even better, place the gate inside a portable hole, fold that puppy up, and place it into a bag of holding... (subject to GM interpretation...))
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Creative Director
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As written, yeah, creating golems should be an evil act. I would prefer instead to revise them away from using soul enslavement to power them up, frankly... but it is what it is. House Rule as you wish.So, for the obvious follow-up question, why Flavour errata in one case (making all published undead options evil), but not for the other (golems should not use enslaved elemental souls/creating a golem should be evil)?
Because that's how previous designers of the game did it, and because we were too timid about backwards compatibility to change it.
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Here's what I've deduced from reading the relevant mechanics.
Dead: The character's hit points are reduced to a negative amount equal to his Constitution score, his Constitution drops to 0, or he is killed outright by a spell or effect. The character's soul leaves his body. Dead characters cannot benefit from normal or magical healing, but they can be restored to life via magic. A dead body decays normally unless magically preserved, but magic that restores a dead character to life also restores the body either to full health or to its condition at the time of death (depending on the spell or device). Either way, resurrected characters need not worry about rigor mortis, decomposition, and other conditions that affect dead bodies.
So when you die, your character's soul leaves the body leaving behind a corpse.
Targets one or more corpses touched
...
This spell turns corpses into undead skeletons or zombies that obey your spoken commands.
Animate dead used to create mindless undead such as skeletons and zombies affect the corpse. However, nothing in its writeup affects the soul in any way. Further, the writeups for zombies and skeletons do not suggest that the created undead has the soul of the previous owner.
Instead, animate dead explicitly notes that this spell simply turns corpses into a specific type of undead that follows your spoken commands.
Skeletons and zombies have this to say.
Skeletons are the animated bones of the dead, brought to unlife through foul magic.
Zombies are the animated corpses of dead creatures, forced into foul unlife via necromantic magic like animate dead.
Again, corpses, not the soul of the creature. Just the calcium and protein left behind.
The final nail in the coffin (forgive the pun) on this subject is the magic jar spell which explicitly notes:
By casting magic jar, you place your soul in a gem or large crystal (known as the magic jar), leaving your body lifeless. Then you can attempt to take control of a nearby body, forcing its soul into the magic jar.
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(Undead creatures are powered by negative energy. Only sentient undead creatures have, or are, souls.)
So skeletons and zombies are not and have not souls. So casting animate dead does not, ever, do anything with the soul of the original creature or anything else because it never says it does, the creature it creates says nothing of it, there's nothing to stop the dead condition from applying, and magic jar says they don't have souls. Case closed.
However, this is not the case for all undead creation. Looking at the spell create undead or its greater version we can see you can create undead that have or are souls.
A much more potent spell than animate dead, this evil spell allows you to infuse a dead body with negative energy to create more powerful sorts of undead: ghouls, ghasts, mummies, and mohrgs.
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Created undead are not automatically under the control of their animator. If you are capable of commanding undead, you may attempt to command the undead creature as it forms.
While the spell itself doesn't say anything about the original souls of the creature it does specify certain types of creatures and notes that these creatures retain free will unless commanded (unlike mindless undead). Magic Jar also states that sentient undead have souls, so every undead mentioned here that has an Intelligence score has a soul.
So now we have to look at the types of undead you can create to see what happens to the soul.
Ghouls are undead that haunt graveyards and eat corpses. Legends hold that the first ghouls were either cannibalistic humans whose unnatural hunger dragged them back from death or humans who in life fed on the rotting remains of their kin and died (and were reborn) from the foul disease—the true source of these undead scavengers is unclear.
Ghouls lurk on the edges of civilization (in or near cemeteries or in city sewers) where they can find ample supplies of their favorite food. Though they prefer rotting bodies and often bury their victims for a while to improve their taste, they eat fresh kills if they are hungry enough. Though most surface ghouls live primitively, rumors speak of ghoul cities deep underground led by priests who worship ancient cruel gods or strange demon lords of hunger. These “civilized” ghouls are no less horrific in their eating habits, and in fact the concept of a well-laid ghoul banquet table is perhaps even more horrifying than the concept of taking a meal fresh from the coffin.
It doesn't mention anything specifically about their souls, other than some legends about being reborn. Magic jar says they have souls.
Created to guard the tombs of the honored dead, mummies are ever vigilant for those who would desecrate their sacred ground.
Mummies are created through a rather lengthy and gruesome embalming process, during which all of the body's major organs are removed and replaced with dried herbs and flowers. After this process, the flesh is anointed with sacred oils and wrapped in purified linens. The creator then finishes the ritual with a create undead spell.
Although most mummies are created merely as guardians and remain loyal to their charge until their destruction, certain powerful mummies have much more free will. The majority are at least 10th-level clerics, and are often kings or pharaohs who have called upon dark gods or sinister necromancers to bind their souls to their bodies after death—usually as a means to extend their rule beyond the grave, but at times simply to escape what they fear will be an eternity of torment in their own afterlife.
Mummies mention that the process binds the soul to the body and as before magic jar says that as sentient undead they have souls. This is also a wonderful example of Paizo's "undead are the evils" thing being really bigoted.
Undead things caring less for life than they did before their own deaths, mohrgs exist solely to wreak havoc on the living. Sometimes mistaken for skeletons or zombies, they are far more dangerous than those mindless abominations, retaining some semblance of their own memories—and the delight they once took in hearing the screams of the dying.
The mohrg entries don't really discuss the creation of mohrgs but only how morhgs spontaneously are created from folks with a lot of blood on their hands (this could include adventurers I might add) and remarks that they return to their killing ways. However, it doesn't govern what happens when a morhg is created from people who aren't mass murderers (such as if you created one out of a milkmaid). In any case they have souls.
What About Raising?
Not affected by raise dead and reincarnate spells or abilities. Resurrection and true resurrection can affect undead creatures. These spells turn undead creatures back into the living creatures they were before becoming undead.
This is the undead creature type and is specific to undead creatures. It notes that certain spells do not affect them and certain spells can turn them back into the living creatures they were before becoming undead. We'll get back to this in a moment as we will soon discover that it does not necessarily prevent you from resurrecting people.
To understand this, we have to look at how raise dead, resurrection, and similar spells actually function.
First let's look at raise dead.
You restore life to a deceased creature. You can raise a creature that has been dead for no longer than 1 day per caster level. In addition, the subject's soul must be free and willing to return. If the subject's soul is not willing to return, the spell does not work; therefore, a subject that wants to return receives no saving throw.
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While the spell closes mortal wounds and repairs lethal damage of most kinds, the body of the creature to be raised must be whole. Otherwise, missing parts are still missing when the creature is brought back to life.
...
A creature who has been turned into an undead creature or killed by a death effect can't be raised by this spell. Constructs, elementals, outsiders, and undead creatures can't be raised. The spell cannot bring back a creature that has died of old age.
This bolded area right here is very important because it is assumed by the spells resurrection and true resurrection and we'll get to that in a moment. However this rule is very important in a moment for handling how raising works with different types of undead.
The next thing that we'll notice is that raise dead requires you to have a whole intact body to work. This means that corpses being used for animate dead aren't suitable because those corpses are now creatures. The soul is still free and elsewhere but you need some sort of body which you no longer have. For the record, this means that animate dead is about as effective as destroying a body or slaying someone with a death-effect at preventing raise dead.
The final thing we'll notice is that this spell cannot be used to raise undead. That is, you cannot slay a mummy and then raise the mummy. It doesn't work. Similarly, you cannot have your favorite zombie destroyed and then raise it as a zombie anymore.
Next is the reincarnate spell.
With this spell, you bring back a dead creature in another body, provided that its death occurred no more than 1 week before the casting of the spell and the subject's soul is free and willing to return. If the subject's soul is not willing to return, the spell does not work; therefore, a subject that wants to return receives no saving throw.
...
Since the dead creature is returning in a new body, all physical ills and afflictions are repaired. The condition of the remains is not a factor. So long as some small portion of the creature's body still exists, it can be reincarnated, but the portion receiving the spell must have been part of the creature's body at the time of death. The magic of the spell creates an entirely new young adult body for the soul to inhabit from the natural elements at hand. This process takes 1 hour to complete. When the body is ready, the subject is reincarnated.
This shares the limitation on available souls like raise dead does, however it has no requirement for a body. Instead, a small piece of the body can be used as long as it was part of the body at the time of death.
Because of this, you could take a lock of hair or a fingernail or something from a dead body and then create a new body to house the soul of the incarnated. Because of this, a necromancer turning the corpse into a mindless undead is unable to prevent their return because the corpse does not have their soul and you are not raising the corpse, so animate dead can't stop reincarnate from working if you took a sample to use before it was cast.
You cannot, however, reincarnate an undead creature. This is not the same thing however.
Similarly, resurrection and true resurrection are similarly empowered and limited.
This spell functions like raise dead, except that you are able to restore life and complete strength to any deceased creature.
The condition of the remains is not a factor. So long as some small portion of the creature's body still exists, it can be resurrected, but the portion receiving the spell must have been part of the creature's body at the time of death. (The remains of a creature hit by a disintegrate spell count as a small portion of its body.)
This spell functions like raise dead, except that you can resurrect a creature that has been dead for as long as 10 years per caster level. This spell can even bring back creatures whose bodies have been destroyed, provided that you unambiguously identify the deceased in some fashion (reciting the deceased's time and place of birth or death is the most common method).
In the case of true resurrection, you don't even need a sample of the soul's original body. However, a soul must be available and willing. So here's where things all start making sense. Here's a summary of all that we have learned. This game is not as self-hating as we are led to believe.
Necromancy For Dummies
Animate Dead: Turns soulless corpses into mindless soulless undead. Mindless undead created by animate dead cannot be raised if destroyed. Since it leaves the soul available, the creatures the bodies were collected from can be returned to life if a suitable body is available (requiring reincarnate or resurrection with a pre-undead sample or resurrection to just not give a damn.
Create (Greater) Undead: These spells create sentient undead. As noted by magic jar sentient undead have souls. Unlike animate dead, you cannot simply acquire a new body and raise your buddy because his or her soul is not available for resurrection as it's currently in an undead body. In other words, the Mummy is George and George is the Mummy. If George the Mummy is destroyed, powerful magics can raise George back into George the Human but not George the Mummy.
Other Undeath: If an undead is sentient it either has a soul (such as vampires, wights, liches*) or is a soul (such as ghosts, wraiths, shadows, etc) then you cannot raise them while they exist because the soul is not available. If they are mindless they do not have souls and thus you can raise the soul assuming a suitable body is available.
RULES + LOGIC = WIN. :D
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Because that's how previous designers of the game did it, and because we were too timid about backwards compatibility to change it.As written, yeah, creating golems should be an evil act. I would prefer instead to revise them away from using soul enslavement to power them up, frankly... but it is what it is. House Rule as you wish.So, for the obvious follow-up question, why Flavour errata in one case (making all published undead options evil), but not for the other (golems should not use enslaved elemental souls/creating a golem should be evil)?Sure, but previous designers also included non-evil undead and Paizo has gone on to change most of them to be always evil in Golarion. This isn't levied as a criticism of the game, setting, or designers. I'm truly curious about the behind-the-scenes decision-making process.
From what you've posted, it sounds like the always-evil undead position was something that had stronger internal proponents of the concept and the issues around Golems/elemental souls or other areas were not topics that received as much attention or had people arguing as strongly for.
There were non-evil undead in 3.5 so this is pretty questionable. Off the top of my head the skeletal and zombie dragons in the Draconomicon were all Neutral and Libris Mortis includes several good aligned undead including Arch-Liches (good liches). Faerun includes Archliches and Baelnorn (more good liches). RAW, any sentient creature can change their alignment which means 100% of sentient undead can just decide to not be evil. Nothing about being undead forces you to be evil in 3.5 or even Pathfinder.
The reason this keeps getting brought up is it's the elephant in the room. It's not consistent even with 3.x. It's not consistent within itself. It keeps appearing over and over. It's not even a noble goal as it limits the imagination and conceptual material you can have rather than expanding it (and in effect making it a weaker RPG system).
It's mind boggling.
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Because that's how previous designers of the game did it, and because we were too timid about backwards compatibility to change it.As written, yeah, creating golems should be an evil act. I would prefer instead to revise them away from using soul enslavement to power them up, frankly... but it is what it is. House Rule as you wish.So, for the obvious follow-up question, why Flavour errata in one case (making all published undead options evil), but not for the other (golems should not use enslaved elemental souls/creating a golem should be evil)?Sure, but previous designers also included non-evil undead and Paizo has gone on to change most of them to be always evil in Golarion. This isn't levied as a criticism of the game, setting, or designers. I'm truly curious about the behind-the-scenes decision-making process.
From what you've posted, it sounds like the always-evil undead position was something that had stronger internal proponents of the concept and the issues around Golems/elemental souls or other areas were not topics that received as much attention or had people arguing as strongly for.
The concept of non-evil undead from WotC was not part of the SRD, and even if we DID want to include deathless in Pathfinder, we would have to rename them and do different mechanics since they're not open content.
Same with animate dead being "Evil."
I strongly suspect a lot of those decisions were made in 3rd edition D&D's days without much thought into how those decisions might impact a world in which those rules are reality.
I don't have a lot of insight into what Jonathan Tweet and Skip Williams and Monte Cook were thinking when they designed the game. I do have educated guesses and opinions formed from being a fly on the wall at the time the game was being worked on at WotC, and from anecdotal evidence and from talking to others involved, but I'm not gonna go into that here.
I do know that when we designed Pathfinder, we were very timid about changing the groundwork for backwards compatibility, and thus inherited all the good AND the bad AND the huh? from the previous game.
If I had a time machine and the bravery to go back and change things, I would double down on the undeath is evil angle, and would have changed how golems work into something more akin to working WITH elemental spirits instead of enslaving them... or perhaps would have hard-coded the slavery aspect of golem making which would have distanced it even more from PCs doing it, which is kinda okay with me too.
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There were non-evil undead in 3.5 so this is pretty questionable. Off the top of my head the skeletal and zombie dragons in the Draconomicon were all Neutral and Libris Mortis includes several good aligned undead including Arch-Liches (good liches). Faerun includes Archliches and Baelnorn (more good liches). RAW, any sentient creature can change their alignment which means 100% of sentient undead can just decide to not be evil. Nothing about being undead forces you to be evil in 3.5 or even Pathfinder.
The reason this keeps getting brought up is it's the elephant in the room. It's not consistent even with 3.x. It's not consistent within itself. It keeps appearing over and over. It's not even a noble goal as it limits the imagination and conceptual material you can have rather than expanding it (and in effect making it a weaker RPG system).
Keep in mind that books like Draconomicon and Libris Mortis are closed content, and as such aren't areas that we at Paizo can build upon. You call it an "elephant in the room," but I call it "avoiding talking too much about closed content and other companies' intellectual property in order to minimize situations where I might put Paizo in legal hot water." Which comes from the better-safe-than-sorry school of thought, really. We can do parallel design of course, if we wanted, but as it works out it's an aesthetic choice that doesn't really appeal to me and so the fact that it's non-open content never really became an issue.
Let me be clear, though. I actually very much DO enjoy stories about non-evil undead. But I enjoy them primarially because those stories are about "underdogs" or nonconformists or exceptions to the rule. I really suspect that this opinion is shared by many… lots of folks like the idea of non-evil undead PRECISELY because most undead are evil, and folks like non-conformist characters who break rules. That's a reason why anti-heroes like Batman or Snake Plisken or Ash are so popular. That's a reason why characters like Driz'zt are so popular. They're exceptions to the established norms.
And I sort of view it as Paizo's (and thus in part my) responsibility to uphold the norms (in this case, that undead are almost always evil) so that the stories folks want to tell CAN be told without them being diminished. And we've even done the same in Pathfinder several times. We've had numerous non-evil ghosts in our adventures, for example. There's a non-evil mummy in Dragon's Demand. And so on.
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Paizo chose to make a thematic decision on how undead would be treated in their setting, but didn't take a thorough look through all the game rules/mechanics/flavour outside of the areas that were immediately obvious to them and thus we are left with the contradictory mishmash of rules and flavour.
Not really. The Deathless subtype and other things were quite familiar to us. Remember that a lot of us who were at Paizo in those earlier days not only worked on a lot of 3rd edition D&D stuff but we also published the official D&D magazines. We were, as a result, really pretty aware of the content that WotC was publishing at the time.
It really more comes down to us not wanting to tempt fate by using content that was not open game content combined with our desire to do our own thing and not simply play with another company's toys exclusively.
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This was always a fun discussion subject (ie: fight instigator) back in the 3.0 days.
Elementals were a separate creature type from Outsider because they were a separate category entirely from Outsider. They come from the elemental planes, not the Outer Planes, are comprised of basic elements of which the Material Plane is itself composed, and are not incarnations of some shade of 'morality' (Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, or Neutrality) in physical form. They don't have a complicated physical makeup (ie: organs) and are generally just composed of their 'elemental' substance.
As for the morality of creating Undead vesus creating Golems, it works a bit like this:
Undead raising via Necromancy is taking a dark, evil spirit (not just evil in alignment, but MADE of evil and the energy that is the opposite of life), and shoving it into a corpse--a once-living vessel that had a living spark of some sort in it, whether it was a soul or not (ie: animating a Human, an Elf, or a Squirrel were all evil, varying by degree). It was a violation of reality, the creation of the Gods, and of Life itself. Even creating mindless Undead is evil, and even mindless Undead would ping AS Evil in most cases. The Evil alignment was not only because of this process, but because of the behavior that resulted--an Undead without explicit commands to do otherwise will attack living creatures in preference to anything else. Were they truly 'mindless' with no animating force, they would simply ignore that which wasn't a part of their 'program'.
Intelligent Undead, 95% of the time, weren't even the original creature's spirit, soul, what have you. Instead, the dark spirit used to animate them was a more powerful one, fully sapient and of an entirely different character (pardon the pun) from the body they inhabit. They have access to that character's memories (thanks to being able to use their meat-brain), and are cunning enough to pretend to be that character out of self-defense, but they are not the same being at all. The few exceptions are due to curses or the creator of the Undead (usually the person undergoing the process) making sure that it is their own essence that remains in control. Or, I suppose, a benevolent one in the case of the Deathless, but I despise the existence of the Deathless on principle.
Golems were another matter entirely. Most were made of a single substance similar in nature to the Elemental spirits bound within them, they were not created in violation of any previous-living form (except in the case of the Flesh Golem, which totally should be Evil and part Necromantic), and the essence itself is not at fault for the actions it is forced to commit (unlike the Undead, which STRIVE to sow death and destruction unless told otherwise). Finally, even going Berserk is not an Evil act, any more than a Barbarian's rage is. The spirit is just either purely furious or so insane from its captivity that it seeks the final freedom--the destruction of the prison that binds it and everything else that gets in the way. In fact, carrying it a bit farther, the Berserk state makes total sense even if it wasn't in a furious rage or insane, as in its escape for freedom it is in a body that can't communicate and the quickest way to find someone who can break it free is to start smashing stuff until they take notice. Most are so slow that 'normal' people can easily outdistance them and get away.
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Now, in my campaigns (clearly, not official, just sharing), I double-down on the Elemental bit a tad for Golems and Constructs, and decree that the Elemental trapped within is simply the 'power source' for the Golem, not the intelligence or program that controls it. It dwells in an 'unconscious' state 99% of the time (its not asleep, its mind is simply suppressed), and when the Golem is destroyed, it goes back to its home Elemental Plane unharmed from the procedure (various anti-dimensional travel spells can prevent this from happening). However, sometimes, something 'wakes it up', whether it be due to damage, it being forced to animate something unnatural (ie: bodies), or the like. Beings as it wasn't intended to be 'awake', its no-longer-suppressed mind conflicts with the magical programming and its 'trapped' state, and it exists in a state of continuous, unbearable agony. This effect is reflected in the "Berserk" ability.
This setup gives an alternate explanation, and makes it pretty reasonable and totally not-Evil to make Constructs at all, in most cases. Might be a good alternative for people out there who want the distinction.
OTOH, as was pointed out earlier:Since it hasn't been quoted yet:
You can resurrect someone killed by a death effect or someone who has been turned into an undead creature and then destroyed.The same goes for miracle, true resurrection, and wish. Trapping someone with animate dead so they cannot be resurrected is essentially equivalent to trapping their soul, and is a common tactic in high level play.Resurrection and true resurrection can affect undead creatures. These spells turn undead creatures back into the living creatures they were before becoming undead.As I see it, you can cast (True) Resurrection on the undead creature, returning it to life, but you can't Resurrect the person otherwise (with True Res or from a piece of the body.)
I'd assume further that the person's soul would determine whether it wanted the Resurrection to work or not. Those who'd become undead of their own free will probably wouldn't be willing to be resurrected. Most of the others probably would.
This is a case where the specific trumps the general. In general an undead cannot be restored by resurrection, true resurrection, and wish. It says it right there in the spell. Certain undead, as outlined in their stat sheet, have resurrection vulnerability or similar special interactions with resurrection spells.
Ashiel can quote all the rules, but none of it explains why animating a dead body prevents that character from being revived until their undead body is destroyed. The OP post gives a perfectly fine fluff answer to that question.
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In 3.0 skeletons and zombies were mindless neutral.
That changed in 3.5 where they were turned into mindless always neutral evil.
Pathfinder did not change that.
Ghosts are the only ones with alignment any in 3.5.
For the others in 3.5 in the srd:
Allips always neutral evil.
Bodak always chaotic evil.
Devourer always neutral evil.
Ghoul/Ghast/Lacedon always chaotic evil.
Mohrg always chaotic evil.
Mummy and mummy lord usually lawful evil.
Nightshade, all three types always chaotic evil.
Shadow and Greater Shadow always chaotic evil.
Spectre always lawful evil.
Vampire and Vampire Spawn always evil (any).
Wight always lawful evil.
Wraith and Dreadwraith always lawful evil.
So ghosts and unusual mummies if you want to get away from always evil undead options in core 3.5.
In 3.5 evil undead was the norm with a few rare exceptions.
I don't believe pathfinder changed any of that.
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Keep in mind that books like Draconomicon and Libris Mortis are closed content, and as such aren't areas that we at Paizo can build upon. You call it an "elephant in the room," but I call it "avoiding talking too much about closed content and other companies' intellectual property in order to minimize situations where I might put Paizo in legal hot water." Which comes from the better-safe-than-sorry school of thought, really. We can do parallel design of course, if we wanted, but as it works out it's an aesthetic choice that doesn't really appeal to me and so the fact that it's non-open content never really became an issue.There were non-evil undead in 3.5 so this is pretty questionable. Off the top of my head the skeletal and zombie dragons in the Draconomicon were all Neutral and Libris Mortis includes several good aligned undead including Arch-Liches (good liches). Faerun includes Archliches and Baelnorn (more good liches). RAW, any sentient creature can change their alignment which means 100% of sentient undead can just decide to not be evil. Nothing about being undead forces you to be evil in 3.5 or even Pathfinder.
The reason this keeps getting brought up is it's the elephant in the room. It's not consistent even with 3.x. It's not consistent within itself. It keeps appearing over and over. It's not even a noble goal as it limits the imagination and conceptual material you can have rather than expanding it (and in effect making it a weaker RPG system).
I'm not talking about taking their non-OGL material. I'm saying there was already a precedent for it in 3.5. I think it's a bit of a stretch to claim the existence of non-evil mindless undead and non-evil sentient undead is an OGL problem. If the mere concept of it were an OGL problem then you'd have to trash a lot of Pathfinder content.
I'm also not talking about Deathless. The deathless were, IMHO, pretty stupid. Corpses powered by positive energy are called living. I could maybe see a positive energy ghost spirit (since there are positive energy beings in the planes) but since positive and negative energy are not aligned the point of deathless is pointlessness.
Let me be clear, though. I actually very much DO enjoy stories about non-evil undead. But I enjoy them primarially because those stories are about "underdogs" or nonconformists or exceptions to the rule. I really suspect that this opinion is shared by many… lots of folks like the idea of non-evil undead PRECISELY because most undead are evil, and folks like non-conformist characters who break rules. That's a reason why anti-heroes like Batman or Snake Plisken or Ash are so popular. That's a reason why characters like Driz'zt are so popular. They're exceptions to the established norms.
Understandable. Contrary to how it may appear from my posts arguing the reasoning (or lack thereof) of the undead=evil stuff, I too prefer a world where most undead are evil and undead are shunned by society. My campaign is like that, but you can do that without hamfisting it and without cheapening the experience.
When I GM an evil vampire antagonist, he's evil because he's evil. Being a vampire just makes him a threat. This, combined with the fact that most "naturally occuring" undead like morhgs and ghouls and things and such have non-spell methods of appearing, usually through desperate malevolent spirits who either refuse or have escaped their final rest means that by the large the undead are evil for more natural reasons (either they are evil people who have received power, people corrupted by their power, or evil people who have returned from the dead because their afterlife sucks and now they're back).
The problem that we have with undead=evil is the reasoning behind it. "They just are" is not a real reason. It feels as hamfisted and tacked on as it actually is. There are lots of perfectly good reasons why most undead are evil. Those reasons actually make sense in the context of how alignment works and what we understand about people.
- A normal person receives some sort of power and immortality and is corrupted by their own desires. This is the classic power corrupts trope and can be seen outside of undeath in films like Dragonheart (where upon obtaining immortality a seemingly okay fellow stops caring).
- An petty evil person obtains power to actually become a threat. This is the way a number of super villains in comic books are born. An example of this would be a character who's turned into an undead creature and then seeks further power, revenge, or whatever. Great for a Jack the Ripper style character too.
- A good soul enslaved. This one has a very Warcraftian vibe to it but it also works with virtually any undead or necromancer capable of creating spawned minions. Essentially a character who is tragically forced to enact the will of an evil overlord due to their compulsion or vice, including but not limited to reluctant vampires, heroes turned undead and then commanded, and so forth.
- Good corrupted. This goes hand in hand with the one above, you have a good soul who through enslavement and psychological trauma goes mad and becomes bitter, spiteful, and deadened to good emotions.
- Undying evils. This one is typically the sort of trope you see with lots of undead creatures like morghs, ghouls, wraiths, and so forth. Generally the theme here is that with nothing to look forward to in the afterlife these evil spirits return to haunt the living. They were evil in life and they're evil now and there's a pretty damn good reason that you don't see many good people returning this way (and if they do return it's usually out of a need to finish something and they return as benevolent ghosts).
- Undeath as a curse. Some creatures may be cursed in some sort of way so that they are placed in an immortal state that in some way damages, torments, or diminishes the character in some sort of way. Things like shadows or allips fall into these these categories.
This means that without any special actions taken, the vast majority of undead creatures are in fact going to be evil with reasons to be evil with Neutral and Good characters following with progressive infrequency.
About the only thing that doesn't work well is the idea that mindless undead are evil since RAW they aren't (the template changes their moral alignment to evil, however by the rules, their alignment must shift to Neutral afterwards according to the Alignment rules themselves) yet I strongly doubt Paizo or anyone else intends to have a mindless undead go against the grain one day and be a good mindless undead (because that's as stupid is an evil one is, unless their alignment is somehow tied to their animator's).
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Here's what I've deduced from reading the relevant mechanics.
Necromancy For Dummies
Animate Dead: Turns soulless corpses into mindless soulless undead. Mindless undead created by animate dead cannot be raised if destroyed. Since it leaves the soul available, the creatures the bodies were collected from can be returned to life if a suitable body is available (requiring reincarnate or resurrection with a pre-undead sample or resurrection to just not give a damn.
Create (Greater) Undead: These spells create sentient undead. As noted by magic jar sentient undead have souls. Unlike animate dead, you cannot simply acquire a new body and raise your buddy because his or her soul is not available for resurrection as it's currently in an undead body. In other words, the Mummy is George and George is the Mummy. If George the Mummy is destroyed, powerful magics can raise George back into George the Human but not George the Mummy.
Other Undeath: If an undead is sentient it either has a soul (such as vampires, wights, liches*) or is a soul (such as ghosts, wraiths, shadows, etc) then you cannot raise them while they exist because the soul is not available. If they are mindless they do not have souls and thus you can raise the soul assuming a suitable body is available.RULES + LOGIC = WIN. :D
I wrote a better post, but it got eaten when paizo was down. In summary:
You're deriving a logical result from a subset of the rules. You're ignoring explicit rules text that doesn't agree.A creature that has been turned into an undead creature or killed by a death effect can't be returned to life by this spell.The same language as Raise Dead. No exceptions for undead that don't incorporate the souls. Even if the undead is destroyed and even though you get a new body, you still can't reincarnate them.
You can revive someone killed by a death effect or someone who has been turned into an undead creature and then destroyed.Same...
As I pointed out in the rules breakdown, animate dead turns corpses (an object) into mindless undead. The creature in question - their soul - is not turned into an undead creature. You can still raise the creature (the soul) that still exists assuming having an existing body is not an issue.
The creature still exists in a non-undead form. Their soul, which can still exist in many forms, is not undead. They have not been turned into the undead. The vessel that was their body prior to their death has been made into a soulless undead creature.
I broke this down, clearly, before.
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The way I conceptualize and house rule it is that they are [Evil]. They are powered by supernatural cosmic [Evil], the creation magic uses supernatural [Evil] as a component of their creation and they therefore tag as evil regardless of the morality of their actions.
Similar to [Evil] outsiders.
I also have no problem with uncontrolled skeletons and zombies being mindless malevolent wandering monsters that attack any people they come across. Conceptually that is very Moldvay Basic and appeals to me. I'm conceptually fine with neutral style mindless 2e and 3.0 animated dead automotons too.