| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
But the simple, persuasive manner you talk a golem out of being uncontrolled leads me to believe it does NOT have to be a hostile relationship in the slightest.I was re-reading some stuff after I woke back up and I found this and thought I'd chime in. The mechanic doesn't allow a Diplomacy check to end the berserk state, it requires a very hard Charisma check. The only similar sorts of Charisma checks are used when commanding charmed creatures or creatures bound with Planar Binding.
Whenever I read the mechanic, it seems far more like you're attempting to override the elemental's will with yours. The berserk mechanic says you are speaking to the golem, not the enslaved elemental. The golem is required to follow your orders so, again, it seems more like a contest of wills between the creator and the elemental for control of the golem.
Just a thought.
Ultimately, it's all fluff, so it doesn't really impact anything.
gotta say though, I really like the idea of a wizard dodging his Golems attacks, while whispering quietly to it:
"Who's a good golem? YOU'RE a good Golem! (insert baby-noises here)"
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In my headcanon intelligent undeads, with particular exceptions like Liches and Vampires, usually have new "souls", as the old one long departed and judged and if even True Resurrection can't bring it back after a certain date, I don't see why Create Undead can do "better".
Still Evil as those intelligent undeads are inclined to Evil like baby chromatic dragons, but it's not impossible to change their alignment.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In my headcanon intelligent undeads, with particular exceptions like Liches and Vampires, usually have new "souls", as the old one long departed and judged and if even True Resurrection can't bring it back after a certain date, I don't see why Create Undead can do "better".
Still Evil as those intelligent undeads are inclined to Evil like baby chromatic dragons, but it's not impossible to change their alignment.
I'm nearly certain that CREATING undead is evil, but that undead are in no way obligated to BE evil.
They just usually are.
Sorta like the monster orphanage thread, I don't think anything is beyond redeeming if you try hard enough. :D
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm nearly certain that CREATING undead is evil, but that undead are in no way obligated to BE evil.They just usually are.
Sorta like the monster orphanage thread, I don't think anything is beyond redeeming if you try hard enough. :D
I am aware and this is why I used the example of chromatic dragons. Undeads are spontaneously evil (just look at Nightshades) but by not being subtyped the intelligent ones are redeemable unlike Demons for example.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I am aware and this is why I used the example of chromatic dragons. Undeads are spontaneously evil (just look at Nightshades) but by not being subtyped the intelligent ones are redeemable unlike Demons for example.
I'm nearly certain that CREATING undead is evil, but that undead are in no way obligated to BE evil.They just usually are.
Sorta like the monster orphanage thread, I don't think anything is beyond redeeming if you try hard enough. :D
Demons are redeemable.
IIRC There is a Succubus redeemed by Desna in
All of this is so much either when you just use the subjective morality option from Unchained.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
All of this is so much either when you just use the subjective morality option from Unchained.
Either what or what? EITHER WHAT OR WHAT?! I MUST KNNNOOOOWWWW~!!!
(Sorry, I couldn't resist. I do stuff like that all the time.)
But the simple, persuasive manner you talk a golem out of being uncontrolled leads me to believe it does NOT have to be a hostile relationship in the slightest.I was re-reading some stuff after I woke back up and I found this and thought I'd chime in. The mechanic doesn't allow a Diplomacy check to end the berserk state, it requires a very hard Charisma check. The only similar sorts of Charisma checks are used when commanding charmed creatures or creatures bound with Planar Binding.
Whenever I read the mechanic, it seems far more like you're attempting to override the elemental's will with yours. The berserk mechanic says you are speaking to the golem, not the enslaved elemental. The golem is required to follow your orders so, again, it seems more like a contest of wills between the creator and the elemental for control of the golem.
Just a thought.
Which is yet another assumption that the golem and the spirit are two different things, instead of the same thing.
We don't know. So blanket judgments are impossible.
==Aelryinth
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
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.You're right, except that James Jacobs tells everyone that it does involve soul trapping magic.
And by the way, I did mention the Golarion part. This is not about RAW.
just going to point out you can trap someones soul and animate their corpse...
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I find that death of the author theory annoying.
But then is it ok to raise him as a skeleton?
I am aware and this is why I used the example of chromatic dragons. Undeads are spontaneously evil (just look at Nightshades) but by not being subtyped the intelligent ones are redeemable unlike Demons for example.
I'm nearly certain that CREATING undead is evil, but that undead are in no way obligated to BE evil.They just usually are.
Sorta like the monster orphanage thread, I don't think anything is beyond redeeming if you try hard enough. :D
Demons are redeemable.
IIRC There is a Succubus redeemed by Desna in
** spoiler omitted **
they'll still ping as evil though, and are effected by smite. :P unless the redeemed one had the subtype removed anyway.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
just going to point out you can trap someones soul and animate their corpse...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.You're right, except that James Jacobs tells everyone that it does involve soul trapping magic.
And by the way, I did mention the Golarion part. This is not about RAW.
Trap the soul forces a creature's life force (and its material body) into a gem. The gem holds the trapped entity indefinitely or until the gem is broken and the life force is released, which allows the material body to reform. If the trapped creature is a powerful creature from another plane, it can be required to perform a service immediately upon being freed. Otherwise, the creature can go free once the gem imprisoning it is broken.
===
quoted. So, not sure what you're talking about. If it's magic jar, a living body without a soul is not a corpse. If you kill the body, the person is now an untied soul and if released from the magic jar, will indeed die, and so follows all the rules for not being able to return to 'life' if the body is animated.
==Aelryinth
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I find that death of the author theory annoying.
It raises some good questions (ex: noting the fact that literary criticism cannot reproduce thoughts that occurred at the time of writing with a definitive statement), and holds a few interesting insights... but I invoke the (abused*) version of Death of the Author to get the most utility out of it.
Death of the Author is a useful tool for expanding and creating thought-provoking discussions about a work when the answers are already known - an introspective bit of navel-gazing that can create interesting conversations. But all-too-often, it's used as a bludgeoning tool: "The author doesn't matter, it's all about meee~!" which... blech. It gets ridiculous after a while.
That said, it also has use for three other things:
1) When (like in a game, or the Cthulu mythos**) there are multiple authors collaborating together to tell a (more-or-less) cohesive whole
2) When the author is intentionally obfuscating information so as to make their work appear as something other than it is. (This includes both when an author is lying to their audience, or when an author writes and wants their audience to come to their own conclusions.)
3) When the author doesn't (consciously) know or have an answer to a question or nature of a work.
Finally, it can be a strong method for explaining the dissonance between a creator and a fan - when a creator creates and a fan becomes passionate about that creation, and the author does something "wrong" from the perspective of the fan, it can help explain the reasons and ideas behind that.
Just... just don't use it to explain why your fanfic is the "correct" version of the story. :/
* Ironic, really.
** Which totes includes Conan, by the way.
==========================
Disentangling quotes for clarity...
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.
You're right, except that James Jacobs tells everyone that it does involve soul trapping magic.
And by the way, I did mention the Golarion part. This is not about RAW.
just going to point out you can trap someones soul and animate their corpse...
Trap the soul forces a creature's life force (and its material body) into a gem. The gem holds the trapped entity indefinitely or until the gem is broken and the life force is released, which allows the material body to reform. If the trapped creature is a powerful creature from another plane, it can be required to perform a service immediately upon being freed. Otherwise, the creature can go free once the gem imprisoning it is broken.
===
quoted. So, not sure what you're talking about. If it's magic jar, a living body without a soul is not a corpse. If you kill the body, the person is now an untied soul and if released from the magic jar, will indeed die, and so follows all the rules for not being able to return to 'life' if the body is animated.==Aelryinth
I think he means, literally, trapping the soul, instead of trap the soul. For example. Also. Other options also exist for trapping the soul, and, when you mix in the juju mystery all sorts of weird things start happening.
(Note: not all of those are useful to leaving behind a corpse to be animated, however!)
((Incidentally, trap the soul is a really poorly-named spell.))
==========================
they'll still ping as evil though, and are effected by smite. :P unless the redeemed one had the subtype removed anyway.
You know, even though that rule totally remains,
Must be a Golarion-specific unwritten rule or something.
EDIT: like, three different times to prevent a triple-post.
just going to point out you can trap someones soul and animate their corpse...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.You're right, except that James Jacobs tells everyone that it does involve soul trapping magic.
And by the way, I did mention the Golarion part. This is not about RAW.
Trap the soul forces a creature's life force (and its material body) into a gem. The gem holds the trapped entity indefinitely or until the gem is broken and the life force is released, which allows the material body to reform. If the trapped creature is a powerful creature from another plane, it can be required to perform a service immediately upon being freed. Otherwise, the creature can go free once the gem imprisoning it is broken.
===
quoted. So, not sure what you're talking about. If it's magic jar, a living body without a soul is not a corpse. If you kill the body, the person is now an untied soul and if released from the magic jar, will indeed die, and so follows all the rules for not being able to return to 'life' if the body is animated.==Aelryinth
hmm weird i was pretty sure there was some way to trap a soul when someone died.
also i know you can find souls in other planes particularly Hell and keep them.
Most of those methods involve magic items and the like, like Galt's infamous guillotines, and are nasty pieces of work in and of themselves. Even daemons use gems for the task.
==Aelryinth
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
hmm weird i was pretty sure there was some way to trap a soul when someone died.just going to point out you can trap someones soul and animate their corpse...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.You're right, except that James Jacobs tells everyone that it does involve soul trapping magic.
And by the way, I did mention the Golarion part. This is not about RAW.
Trap the soul forces a creature's life force (and its material body) into a gem. The gem holds the trapped entity indefinitely or until the gem is broken and the life force is released, which allows the material body to reform. If the trapped creature is a powerful creature from another plane, it can be required to perform a service immediately upon being freed. Otherwise, the creature can go free once the gem imprisoning it is broken.
===
quoted. So, not sure what you're talking about. If it's magic jar, a living body without a soul is not a corpse. If you kill the body, the person is now an untied soul and if released from the magic jar, will indeed die, and so follows all the rules for not being able to return to 'life' if the body is animated.==Aelryinth
1. Summon a Cacaedaemon to trap it for you.
2. Cast Creat Soul Gem3. Cast Soul Bind
Options 1 and 2 come online a lot earlier and don't cost you anything of value, but they allow someone to bust the soul out with a successful CL check when casting Raise Dead while Trap the Soul absolutely, 100% blocks you bringing the person back unless you get the gem and destroy it.
the cacaedaemon is what i was thinking of. :P
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Except that, as far as I can tell, there is no RAW saying your soul is actually used. Just that it prevents you from being raised. One interpretation is that your soul is tied to the undead body. It could simply be interfering in some other fashion.It's not actually RAW as far as I can tell that the soul is "ripped from their final resting place and forced back". Other than in a few special cases, where the soulWell it actually is.
I mean, if you have been dead for 500 years, and then your corpse is animated...
What happened during that 500 years?
Yeah, animating dead is damn evil.
Isn't it obvious why Resurrection magic doesn't work? Your body is occupied by whatever force (RAW seems to say Negative Energy) is animating your meat bag!
Someone casts a Raise Dead. Your soul flies down to it's body... and can't get back in, because Neg Energy hung an ethereal sign around your neck that says, "Occupado."Which is why you have to destroy undead before you can resurrect them: You gotta evict the current tenants first!
Furthermore, if the soul is being trapped inside it's own body... to fuel it's unlife... then why isn't it just alive again? Original body + original soul = Vampire? Huh?
And even if you go with that, what is making the original soul evil all of a sudden? The Neg Energy? No, that can't be it because Negative Energy is specifically not-evil (it's neutral, just like Positive Energy or Fire, etc.)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hmmm, mindless undead being evil.
Well, you might find an answer from looking at the only outsiders native to the negative energy plane.
These guys are negative energy given flesh, and they hate. They hate the living. They hate the undead. They hate everything that's not themselves.
And they probably hate themselves, too.
Negative energy apparently comes with seriously negative emotions.
I don't think it's a stretch to go with a mindless undead is a husk driven by pure fury, with no capacity for reason to temper it.
Your zombie farmers are fueled by hate.
Alternative theory - negative energy is nasty stuff. Even a minimal exposure - inflict light wounds - can put a peasant in critical condition, and a negative level would kill a 1st level character outright.
In short, negative energy hurts.
Being re-animated means you are bathing someone in that stuff, constantly, and they are awake and aware the entire time.
It's like setting someone on fire and making them burn forever. And fills them with a need to ignite other people.
(Most zombies and skeletons lack the power to convert others, but that lack isn't stopping them from trying.)
And so the very act of performing such a negative energy infusion is such a colossally dickish move that the universe itself disapproves =P
Positive energy makes you prone to anger and Xeophobic due to jyoti then. http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/jyoti
So yeah.
I always assumed that animate dead just used negative energy. It's evil because the zombie or skeleton can only attack or follow someone around. Create undead is the one that brings back the soul and forces it to be a ghoul or vampire. A skeleton or zombie have none of the mental stats that suggest the soul.
A paladin turned into a vampire would have to fight their new nature. They would lose their lay on hands or it would reverse. They would have to obtain blood indirectly to avoid causing energy drain. It's the negative energy that makes them need to kill.
My theory is that a zombie that doesn't kill will rot into a skeleton, then eventually fall apart.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I always assumed that animate dead just used negative energy. It's evil because the zombie or skeleton can only attack or follow someone around.If that's evil, then so is my fighter.
Oh, come on now. Your fighter can do many more things. He can sleep, drool, sneeze, poop, feel his own pulse, swim, climb (more easily), breathe, be healed by positive energy. Oh, and die - you can definitely die better than a skeleton or zombie.
So see? It's no comparison, you don't have to be evil like them because you're way more OP.
James Jacobs was editor in chief of the core rulebook. I would like to read his topic. Does he feel there is any difference in animate dead?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Eh, wouldn't matter much. Most the spells are copy pasted out of 3.5 which was from 3.0
You'd need to go back and ask whomever decided going from 3.0 to 3.5 that mindless undead should be evil. I'm betting the answer is "So paladins can smite them."
A trapped soul makes sense for an intelligent undead, because they still have the original person's consciousness to some degree (more or less depending on the type of undead).
The argument always felt really weird for mindless undead though. Why do you need to trap a soul to animate a pile of bones? It feels more like a cheap way to make the smell more EVULZ than something that seems particularly coherent.
But eh.
Seems pretty clear to me, undead are evil (barring rare exceptions who exist to tell interesting stories) because they all tend have some sort of instinctual hatred of the living. Ghouls and vampires don't physiologically need to eat, but they still have an insatiable hunger. Skeletons and zombies, despite being mindless still hunt down and kill all living things unless given orders not to as described in their Bestiary entries. This is supported by quite a number of examples in published adventures, a person could disagree with this interpretation, and for their own games change it, which is the beauty of the system, but it is all pretty internally consistent.
If you replace animate dead with animate object, you eliminate the evil aspect. Bone Dance does this to a lesser, temporary, degree.
And yeah, there are some internal inconsistencies. This topic is only about Create Undead.
To a lesser degree, animate dead. It's evil because skeletons cannot do household chores or run mills. It's evil because it uses negative energy, necrotic energy.
To a lesser degree, animate dead. It's evil because skeletons cannot do household chores or run mills. It's evil because it uses negative energy, necrotic energy.Sure they can. And negative energy isn't evil.
You don't have to use RAW. Homebrew is the cure for all the inconsistencies I am aware of.
I think of it like Supernatural. The Darkness lurks in the negative energy. Not all negative energy is evil. Not all water is fish. But if you are not careful, fish will be coming out of your tap and swimming in your toilet.
To a lesser degree, animate dead. It's evil because skeletons cannot do household chores or run mills. It's evil because it uses negative energy, necrotic energy.Sure they can. And negative energy isn't evil.
It isn't evil, but it sure is a cousin to evil. It's evil adjacent. It has evil tenancies. At least looking at the d20PFSRD, that is (now with extra info from Occult Adventures!)
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Tammy doesn't have time for this shit anymore, can't we just sticky one of these.
Negative energy isn't evil in the same way that death isn't evil. However it is a force of indiluted entropy, destruction and negation. If you tap into that force then you are acting evilly.
All cultures that I am aware of have some form of ceremony for dealing with the dead for hygiene reasons as much as anything. Even those with no religious beliefs still treat the dead with reverence.
As a result animating corpses is considered evil in all traditions, from eastern blood magic, to Caribbean voodoo. It is possible in a future society there will be a utilitarian view of corpses as nutrients or flesh to be recycled but we are a long way from that. That kind of utilitarian approach would be one of the first indicators of an evil society for me.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Negative energy isn't evil in the same way that death isn't evil. However it is a force of indiluted entropy, destruction and negation. If you tap into that force then you are acting evilly.
All cultures that I am aware of have some form of ceremony for dealing with the dead for hygiene reasons as much as anything. Even those with no religious beliefs still treat the dead with reverence.
As a result animating corpses is considered evil in all traditions, from eastern blood magic, to Caribbean voodoo. It is possible in a future society there will be a utilitarian view of corpses as nutrients or flesh to be recycled but we are a long way from that. That kind of utilitarian approach would be one of the first indicators of an evil society for me.
My family has opted to incinerate our corpses because it's just a pile of soulless matter and it's less expensive than burials. Pretty sure that's along the lines of utilitarian. And I'm Lawful Good. (>_>)
I gotta say, the first indicator of an evil society to me would be how they treated one-another. How they treat corpses is entirely irrelevant to morality.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Negative energy isn't evil in the same way that death isn't evil. However it is a force of indiluted entropy, destruction and negation. If you tap into that force then you are acting evilly.
All cultures that I am aware of have some form of ceremony for dealing with the dead for hygiene reasons as much as anything. Even those with no religious beliefs still treat the dead with reverence.
As a result animating corpses is considered evil in all traditions, from eastern blood magic, to Caribbean voodoo. It is possible in a future society there will be a utilitarian view of corpses as nutrients or flesh to be recycled but we are a long way from that. That kind of utilitarian approach would be one of the first indicators of an evil society for me.
Reverence is of course wiring eyes shut, sewing mouth shuts, injecting you full of chemicals, forcing your family to pauper themselves to buy a dead body a fancy one use box and so on. Even when medically speaking there is no benefit to doing so. Even when there are less harmful alternatives to doing so. This is exploitation, not Reverence.
Now Vodou (They don't like it when you call it voodoo) has it's god, but between the god and them are the Loa, basically the spirits, who are in turn served by the vodou priests and the bokor or sorcerors who aren't directly part of the religion itself but are part of the culture. Vodou have no connection to zombi, but bokor do. The bokor are known for doing both good and evil equally in their servitude of the Loa and they create the zombi in turn, though it's said the Loa Baron Samedi who is the guide of reincarnation will cause one to become a zombi if angered.
The only real consistent description of the zombi in the classic myths however is they have no free will. They are slaves to whatever created them. They aren't even consistently dead!
Though truth be told, there is very little consistent scholarly material on Vodou. Most of what we have originates from propaganda against it. And that's a lot of propaganda. Even to this day there is propaganda and fear of this religion flying around. It's a little disappointing.
Cremation and the scattering of ashes, or collection in an urn is still reverence of the dead, as is burning on a boat, or on a high pyre, or building a high platform for them to be claimed by the elements and beasts.
All these are reverential. As I said, no culture treats their own dead with contempt (though they may desecrate other cultures bodies). The exorbitant amount of money people spend only shows how important it is considered.
Attempting to restore a corpse to the semblance of what they looked like in life if a cultural sensitivity but hardly exploitation. The U.K. Doesn't have the same tradition of open caskets to the extent of America so maybe I don't see the level of exploitation that you do. I do know what reverence for the dead has nothing to do with religion. Having spoken to a few people about this I am confident that most people would be horrified to discover someone was using parts from a cemetery. You only have to look at the rightful outrage where bodies were used for experimentation without permission. It is an extremely powerful emotive subject.
In the case of zombi, you have kind have made my point that it was/is used as a punishment. Slavery is generally considered to be evil.
There is plenty of justification for the animation of the dead to be an evil act - even without delving into the hungry dead/negative energy elements which may vary game world to game world.
We have different definitions of internally consistent then.
I suppose so, as I can't find the inconsistency you insist is there, aside from your repeated statements that it exists. But that's ok, The beauty of the system is that you can change it to whatever your heart desires.
I do know what reverence for the dead has nothing to do with religion.
I guess it's partially because of their alikeness to the living. While from a rational point of view a corpse is just an object which doesn't feel anything, from an emotional point of view they are former living people.
I mean, kicking animals is usually considered evil. Kicking plastic animal toys would technically not hurt the toys (because they are no feelings), but due to their resemblance to living animals it would still be frowned upon.
There is also a natural revulsion to things that have the appearance of being human without being alive. Zombies definitely fall into this category, it's called the Uncanny Valley because if you plot likeness to humankind along an X axis and feelings of approval along a y axis there is a dramatic drop as things become like a human but identifiably not. It is the reason that realistic animations of living this can be extremely off putting. Also the reason the android theme is so often used to great effect in horror and sci-fi.
Oh! Tammy's gonna take that one.
So it's not negative energy that makes it evil. Just some other unwritten force. (So much for RAW.)
That was an example of how I don't always follow RAW. You are going to too much trouble trying to have an argument!
Saying negative energy isn't evil was disagreeing with me.
Does disrupt undead use negative energy?
Does speak with dead use negative energy?
Perhaps I should just leave it at Any spell with the evil descriptor is evil unless greatly rewritten. I'm going to hide the topic. You keep being mean and they will lock the topic anyway.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Some times shit is evil, Tammy lives with it.