Just to add to this, there are non-evil undead. Dragon's Demand
|
by "RAW" nothing needs to eat to survive.no they don't unless you are using the optional variant rules, by raw no undead needs to feed to surviveHeck, even intelligent undead are usually biologically incapable of coexisting with living creatures, mostly because Vampires and the like HAVE to prey upon living things to surviveMost people don't consider that evil... considering that's true of all non-autotrophic life.RAW enough for me.Humanoids breathe, eat, and sleep.
Outsiders breathe, but do not need to eat or sleep (although they can do so if they wish).
Undead do not breathe, eat, or sleep.
I was referring to the fact that we don't have rules for starvation.
... or do we?
no they don't unless you are using the optional variant rules, by raw no undead needs to feed to surviveHeck, even intelligent undead are usually biologically incapable of coexisting with living creatures, mostly because Vampires and the like HAVE to prey upon living things to surviveMost people don't consider that evil... considering that's true of all non-autotrophic life.
By raw ghouls are undead who haunt graveyards and eat corpses and are willing to kill fresh meat if hungry enough. Totenmasks drink flesh and memories.
There are more examples of undead that eat than there are evil outsiders who've turned good.
Oooo, we do have rules for Starvation! Sweet!
I'm guessing these were in the Gamemastery Guide?
It's actually on the CRB. The chapter after gamemastering or part of it. Along with weather it tends to be neglected...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
What I'd like to explore lies less on undeath's inherent evil and more with negative energy.
Negative energy is a source of destruction to positive's creation. It's a primal force, something that should not answer to either good nor evil. A negative energy creature (not necessarily an undead) feels the desire to destroy life because that's its intended purpose. Like predators keeping an infestation of prey from devouring every leaf in a forest, they trim the outgrowth of reality. It's like ouroboros, the eternal snake that devours itself and regenerates anew, a never-ending cycle.
Yet, just about ALL creatures born of negative energy are 'evil' because their purpose is destruction, to unmake and devour life and leave behind an emptiness, which inevitably, life will fill in again with new life. That's the way things work.
But you could say daemons do the same thing. Except daemons actively obliterate souls, taking them out of the equation entirely. Negative energy is subtraction. The daemons effectively want to make 1 = 0.
Getting off on a tangent here. What I'm basically saying is that infusing a formerly-dead body with negative energy is to create an agent of destruction, but it isn't purely that. It's almost like an adulteration of negative energy as much as it is of life itself.
So I want to contend the notion of negative energy = evil, especially since positive energy =/= good. Pathfinder IS a place where there is a cosmic balance.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
What I'd like to explore lies less on undeath's inherent evil and more with negative energy.
Negative energy is a source of destruction to positive's creation. It's a primal force, something that should not answer to either good nor evil. A negative energy creature (not necessarily an undead) feels the desire to destroy life because that's its intended purpose. Like predators keeping an infestation of prey from devouring every leaf in a forest, they trim the outgrowth of reality. It's like ouroboros, the eternal snake that devours itself and regenerates anew, a never-ending cycle.
Yet, just about ALL creatures born of negative energy are 'evil' because their purpose is destruction, to unmake and devour life and leave behind an emptiness, which inevitably, life will fill in again with new life. That's the way things work.
But you could say daemons do the same thing. Except daemons actively obliterate souls, taking them out of the equation entirely. Negative energy is subtraction. The daemons effectively want to make 1 = 0.
Getting off on a tangent here. What I'm basically saying is that infusing a formerly-dead body with negative energy is to create an agent of destruction, but it isn't purely that. It's almost like an adulteration of negative energy as much as it is of life itself.
So I want to contend the notion of negative energy = evil, especially since positive energy =/= good. Pathfinder IS a place where there is a cosmic balance.
Negative energy represents the ability to take a life. Positive energy represents the ability to give a life. It's not that they are aligned themselves, it's just that those who fully embrace the ability to take a life tend to be evil.
My ideas for why it could be:
- Mindless undead are evil because living things are animated by positive energy, and as such our existance is inimical to the negative energy that animates the undead, and so it drives them to snuff out all life. Unleashing them is evil because their basic instinct when faced with other creatures is KILL, KILL, KILL.
- Undead were created by Urgathoa when she refused to stay dead and brought herself back to life, as creator goddess of the undead, the creation of undead is fueled by her power, and anyone casting a spell that creates undead is channeling her evil.
The thing with the undead and "eating" is that most of them you need to go into the expanded material to actually find any requirement of eating. Maybe all. A ghoul using just the bestiary... doesn't have any consequences to not eating people (in fact, the undead type says they don't have to). Ditto vampire. And then if we use the extra material, it's very clear (for vampires at least) that it's not necessary. It's just really, really nice (for the vampire). And if the vampire chooses to do that, they're Evil. They've prioritized their own happiness over someone else's suffering.
It's like if McDonalds offered a free milkshake (or whatever) if you just punched the person behind you in the face. You know some people would take that offer, and they would universally be Evil.
Specific usually trumps general. Undead as a class don't need to eat, but undead listed as feeding to assuage an insatiable hunger may as well need to eat because even if they aren't going to die from not doing it, eventually hunger pangs are going to drive you to eat something.
So you're saying you would consider a man who slits human throats periodically to be of the exact same moral character as a man who works in a slaughterhouse for a living? Because that's your argument here.
Except there is nothing preventing the undead from feeding on animals....
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
fluff=/= raw so it doesn't matter how the thematic of the creature is written if there is no rule that stats it must feed it does not have too. a vampire could say in its fluff that it drains 100 people a day but unless its a hard set rule into the template it would not need to even drain one person
Do the rules say whether or not Dwarves need to eat? Can they subsist entirely on rocks and pebbles? Are gnomes capable of photosynthesis?
I mean the starvation rules say that "characters" need about a pound of "decent food" per day (half for small sized critters) without defining what "decent food is", but presumably it would be "something nourishing to the life form in question". So a vampire would need to drain about a half liter of blood per day, which is conveniently within the range what a person low on blood would produce in a given day.
fluff=/= raw so it doesn't matter how the thematic of the creature is written if there is no rule that stats it must feed it does not have too. a vampire could say in its fluff that it drains 100 people a day but unless its a hard set rule into the template it would not need to even drain one personSpecific usually trumps general. Undead as a class don't need to eat, but undead listed as feeding to assuage an insatiable hunger may as well need to eat because even if they aren't going to die from not doing it, eventually hunger pangs are going to drive you to eat something.The thing with the undead and "eating" is that most of them you need to go into the expanded material to actually find any requirement of eating. Maybe all. A ghoul using just the bestiary... doesn't have any consequences to not eating people (in fact, the undead type says they don't have to). Ditto vampire. And then if we use the extra material, it's very clear (for vampires at least) that it's not necessary. It's just really, really nice (for the vampire). And if the vampire chooses to do that, they're Evil. They've prioritized their own happiness over someone else's suffering.
It's like if McDonalds offered a free milkshake (or whatever) if you just punched the person behind you in the face. You know some people would take that offer, and they would universally be Evil.
The ecology section is as much rule as a listing of what creature types are and do.
Vampires being able to nonlethally feed on animals is usually only a thing if the setting specifically allows it to be. Most of the time it's dragging someone into a dark place and then cracking them open like a red bull, which is kind of different from you and the orc family down the street both enjoying bacon for breakfast.I have revised the Vampire template and I don't see any rule that states they have to kill anybody. Quite the opposite, their feeding just deals 1d4 CON damage. That would hardly be able to kill someone. Plus:
A vampire who refuses to feed on intelligent beings is relegated to the dull taste of animal blood out of necessity.That is 1d4 con per round of draining blood. Unfortunately there is no indication of how many rounds a vampire needs to feed for a full day's worth of sustenance(if they even need it).
Just 3 rounds of feeding has a chance to kill the average (con 10) person.
According to Blood of the Night, 1 use of this ability constitutes as a feeding. So, minimum 1 point CON damage, max 4, per vampire, per day, is the minimum needed to not starve or, rather, go feral with hunger.
except as undead they do not need to eat or drinkfluff=/= raw so it doesn't matter how the thematic of the creature is written if there is no rule that stats it must feed it does not have too. a vampire could say in its fluff that it drains 100 people a day but unless its a hard set rule into the template it would not need to even drain one personDo the rules say whether or not Dwarves need to eat? Can they subsist entirely on rocks and pebbles? Are gnomes capable of photosynthesis?
I mean the starvation rules say that "characters" need about a pound of "decent food" per day (half for small sized critters) without defining what "decent food is", but presumably it would be "something nourishing to the life form in question". So a vampire would need to drain about a half liter of blood per day, which is conveniently within the range what a person low on blood would produce in a given day.
Which does not say that as creatures described as having a hunger for (insert material from the living here) that they do not suffer hunger pangs when they don't eat, which will on a long enough timeline lead to doing whatever you can to relieve those pangs.
According to Blood of the Night, 1 use of this ability constitutes as a feeding. So, minimum 1 point CON damage, max 4, per vampire, per day, is the minimum needed to not starve or, rather, go feral with hunger.
I don't know how much we should base off Blood of the Night's specifically optional ruleset in this discussion.
Oooo, we do have rules for Starvation! Sweet!
I'm guessing these were in the Gamemastery Guide?
Actually, the CRB in the environment chapter (p444).
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
According to Blood of the Night, 1 use of this ability constitutes as a feeding. So, minimum 1 point CON damage, max 4, per vampire, per day, is the minimum needed to not starve or, rather, go feral with hunger.I don't know how much we should base off Blood of the Night's specifically optional ruleset in this discussion.
If nothing else, it serves as a guideline; something we can base off of. Going only off of the Bestiary entry limits us incredibly. The description, additional rules text, and other entries all are what let us know about the creature.
Using a parallel example, (ignoring the subtype, alignment, and DR) how would you know the Interloctor Kyton isn't a benevolent life-giver? If you ignore the keys in the stat block that specifically show it as evil, we see it has breath of life, cure serious wounds, and stabilize as spell-like abilities. It's only in reading the descriptive text that we find out why it's Evil.
You're doing something similar with Undead. Looking only at their stat blocks, and ignoring sources that talk about behavior, the optional rulesets that translate what would otherwise be described as "an insatiable hunger" into game terminology, you are cutting out everything that makes them evil.
What makes Drow evil? Not their stat blocks, to be sure. It's in the descriptive text that we find out they're slavers, torturers, fleshwarpers, demon worshipers, and worse.
Basically, my point is that the descriptive text, extra supplements, and other sources should all be factored when discussing alignment.
Basically, my point is that the descriptive text, extra supplements, and other sources should all be factored when discussing alignment.
Descriptive text, supplements, and other sources yes. Material which is specifically stated to be an optional ruleset, no.
It's like making decisions on alignment based on the subjective morality optional ruleset.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Because reasons.
Seriously, it's just fiat. Never mind that you're feeding starving peasants with undead farmers, or saving children from soul-crushing manual labor. It's EVILLLL.
Vampires being able to nonlethally feed on animals is usually only a thing if the setting specifically allows it to be. Most of the time it's dragging someone into a dark place and then cracking them open like a red bull, which is kind of different from you and the orc family down the street both enjoying bacon for breakfast.I have revised the Vampire template and I don't see any rule that states they have to kill anybody. Quite the opposite, their feeding just deals 1d4 CON damage. That would hardly be able to kill someone. Plus:
A vampire who refuses to feed on intelligent beings is relegated to the dull taste of animal blood out of necessity.
They don't HAVE to kill, but just like in the movies they are often played as killers so they are evil. They also have the dominate ability, and in PF official adventures they have taken people as slaves, which many consider as evil.
Basically it goes back to media tropes and Paizo following those tropes. Most movies involving undead and or necromancers dont have them doing good things.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
and while some ghouls eat others may not that doesn't make them any less ghoul. and if your going to be nit picky id like to mention zombies actually aren't suposta be undead they are just living people poisoned by witch doctors to do their bidding in a trance like state and that's just one of the ways pathfinder is different from the real world inputIf really every aspect concerning a creature had to be fully realized as part of the stat block, the basics Bestiary alone would be the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica, without adding any real worth by doing so. Things trying to model real world objects or being based on our myths simply carry instructions based on understanding what it is. You ignore that, it´s not that thing anymore.
A Ghoul is an eater of the dead. You ignore that, it´s anything but a Ghoul.
Disease (Su) Ghoul Fever: Bite—injury; save Fort DC 13; onset 1 day; frequency 1/day; effect 1d3 Con and 1d3 Dex damage; cure 2 consecutive saves. The save DC is Charisma-based. A humanoid who dies of ghoul fever rises as a ghoul at the next midnight. A humanoid who becomes a ghoul in this way retains none of the abilities it possessed in life. It is not under the control of any other ghouls, but it hungers for the flesh of the living and behaves like a normal ghoul in all respects. A humanoid of 4 Hit Dice or more rises as a ghast.
Normal ghouls specifically hunger for the flesh of the living. It's in the literal rules text of the disease that is a core part of their reproductive process.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Tired of being treated as a mindless creature with no rights?
Sick of people labeling you as evil, impure, corrupted or dead?
Join the Golgari Swarm™!
A place for misunderstood people like you.
We'll offer you a noble and gratifying job on one of our farms, in a friendly environment where you will be surrounded by people who are just like you.
Because being undead doesn't mean that you cannot enjoy life.
If you are a negative energy based life force join the Golgari Swarm™ NOW!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
To support the concept of the overwhelming majority of Undead being Evil, it would probably be good to change the rules so that most Undead have a real need to feed (eating flesh or blood for most corporeal Undead, and Energy Drain or Ability Damage/Drain for most incorporeal Undead, although with specific exceptions in both cases; either way, the instictual preference of prey choice is strongly towards sentient beings). If they don't feed, they won't completely starve outright, but they can't heal, and their activities are extremely curtailed, while their hunger becomes maddening even as they find themselves forced to sleep to conserve energy; if they can feed sufficiently, they don't need to sleep. Intelligent Undead are often terrified of the prospect of being forced into sleep (to rebuild their energy very slowly by the trickle of energy that comes from their Negative Energy Plane connection) for long periods and being unable to defend themselves effectively (and if they have managed to build up a bit of reserve energy, when awoken they may not be able to resist their hunger, and do something that gets themselves killed even when they know better). This by itself doesn't absolutely guarantee that Undead will be Evil, but it provides an extremely strong push in that direction.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
To support the concept of the overwhelming majority of Undead being Evil, it would probably be good to change the rules so that most Undead have a real need to feed (eating flesh or blood for most corporeal Undead, and Energy Drain or Ability Damage/Drain for most incorporeal Undead, although with specific exceptions in both cases; either way, the instictual preference of prey choice is strongly towards sentient beings). If they don't feed, they won't completely starve outright, but they can't heal, and their activities are extremely curtailed, while their hunger becomes maddening even as they find themselves forced to sleep to conserve energy; if they can feed sufficiently, they don't need to sleep. Intelligent Undead are often terrified of the prospect of being forced into sleep (to rebuild their energy very slowly by the trickle of energy that comes from their Negative Energy Plane connection) for long periods and being unable to defend themselves effectively (and if they have managed to build up a bit of reserve energy, when awoken they may not be able to resist their hunger, and do something that gets themselves killed even when they know better). This by itself doesn't absolutely guarantee that Undead will be Evil, but it provides an extremely strong push in that direction.
There was a book in 3.5 that described undead that way. If they didn't feed they would wither and loss powers. I wanna say libor mortis but there was like 3 hard backs focused on undead so could of been any of them.
Not sure what was in Libre Mortis (although I have heard of the name), but I wouldn't recommend having them wither away. If you awaken them from starvation-induced sleep, you have a big risk that they will still be very dangerous, unless you really know what you are doing with timing your attack after they have sustained damage and been unable to feed sufficiently to repair it. This goes up to a virtual certainty of danger if they have been asleep long enough to trickle-charge up to full.
There was a book in 3.5 that described undead that way. If they didn't feed they would wither and loss powers. I wanna say libor mortis but there was like 3 hard backs focused on undead so could of been any of them.To support the concept of the overwhelming majority of Undead being Evil, it would probably be good to change the rules so that most Undead have a real need to feed (eating flesh or blood for most corporeal Undead, and Energy Drain or Ability Damage/Drain for most incorporeal Undead, although with specific exceptions in both cases; either way, the instictual preference of prey choice is strongly towards sentient beings). If they don't feed, they won't completely starve outright, but they can't heal, and their activities are extremely curtailed, while their hunger becomes maddening even as they find themselves forced to sleep to conserve energy; if they can feed sufficiently, they don't need to sleep. Intelligent Undead are often terrified of the prospect of being forced into sleep (to rebuild their energy very slowly by the trickle of energy that comes from their Negative Energy Plane connection) for long periods and being unable to defend themselves effectively (and if they have managed to build up a bit of reserve energy, when awoken they may not be able to resist their hunger, and do something that gets themselves killed even when they know better). This by itself doesn't absolutely guarantee that Undead will be Evil, but it provides an extremely strong push in that direction.
There were more hardbacks on the undead than the Libris Mortis in 3.5?
ghost walk and heroes of horror. although I guess heroes of horror wasn't just undead but there was a large section on undead. I guess it had to be libro mortis that had hunger section in it.
ghost walk and heroes of horror. although I guess heroes of horror wasn't just undead but there was a large section on undead. I guess it had to be libro mortis that had hunger section in it.
I don't remember much on undead in HoH, and Ghostwalk was the one for undead PCs was it not?
I still have Libris Mortis somewhere, and might check that stuff if I can extract it from whatever corner it's stuck in.
Its possible I could be thinking of a different one there is really undead stuff scattered everywhere, And I haven't ready those old books since the early 00's
And yes on the ghost walk one.
To support the concept of the overwhelming majority of Undead being Evil, it would probably be good to change the rules so that most Undead have a real need to feed (eating flesh or blood for most corporeal Undead, and Energy Drain or Ability Damage/Drain for most incorporeal Undead, although with specific exceptions in both cases; either way, the instictual preference of prey choice is strongly towards sentient beings). If they don't feed, they won't completely starve outright, but they can't heal, and their activities are extremely curtailed, while their hunger becomes maddening even as they find themselves forced to sleep to conserve energy; if they can feed sufficiently, they don't need to sleep. Intelligent Undead are often terrified of the prospect of being forced into sleep (to rebuild their energy very slowly by the trickle of energy that comes from their Negative Energy Plane connection) for long periods and being unable to defend themselves effectively (and if they have managed to build up a bit of reserve energy, when awoken they may not be able to resist their hunger, and do something that gets themselves killed even when they know better). This by itself doesn't absolutely guarantee that Undead will be Evil, but it provides an extremely strong push in that direction.
I would love to see this.
A reason they're usually evil made in mechanics, while not a forced compulsion.
Vampires being able to nonlethally feed on animals is usually only a thing if the setting specifically allows it to be. Most of the time it's dragging someone into a dark place and then cracking them open like a red bull, which is kind of different from you and the orc family down the street both enjoying bacon for breakfast.I have revised the Vampire template and I don't see any rule that states they have to kill anybody. Quite the opposite, their feeding just deals 1d4 CON damage. That would hardly be able to kill someone. Plus:
A vampire who refuses to feed on intelligent beings is relegated to the dull taste of animal blood out of necessity.
There's an intriguing implication there. Animal blood might do the job, but human blood is just so... invigorating.
Ill look when i get home.
Ghostwalk was the one for undead PCs was it not?
Interestingly despite being about Ghost PCs, it has nothing to do with undead. Handled them as outsiders, which admittedly is more internally consistent.