D&D 5E Why is animate dead considered inherently evil?

[Tolerable Tyrant]

I'm having a troublesome time understanding why the animate dead spell is considered evil. When I read the manual it states that the spall imbues the targeted corpse with a foul mimicry of life, implying that the soul is not a sentient being who is trapped in a decaying corpse. Rather, the spell does exactly what its title suggests, it only animates the corps. Now of course one could use the spell to create zombies that would hunt and kill humans, but by that same coin, they could create a labor force that needs no form of sustenance (other than for the spell to be recast of course). There have also been those who have said "the spell is associated with the negative realm which is evil", however when you ask someone why the negative realm is bad that will say "because it is used for necromancy", I'm sure you can see the fallacy in this argument.

However, I must take into account that I have only looked into the DnD magic system since yesterday so there are likely large gaps in my knowledge. PS(Apon further reflection I've decided that the animate dead spell doesn't fall into the school of necromancy, as life is not truly given to the corps, instead I believe this would most likely fall into the school of transmutation.) PPS(I apologize for my sloppy writing, I've decided I'm feeling too lazy to correct it.)

 

[Voadam]

An action can be inherently evil and yet still be used to good ends

That this happened still doesn't excuse the action itself from being evil, which is (I think) the pushback you're getting here.

I mostly agree. There are a couple of extreme bad things I consider evil in all circumstances and so inherently evil even when used to do good. I consider torture inherently evil. Narrative circumstances can be twisted to make it appear the best means to stop greater evil (the show 24 worked hard to justify torture) and a lesser evil in some circumstances but I consider actual torture evil in all applications (I don't really consider teasing or consensual exquisite torture types of situations as real torture though).

Taboo icky things like animating a dead corpse with a foul mimicry of life does not rise to the level of inherently evil for me.

Most D&D though through editions did not actually consider most evil as defined in the games to be inherently evil. In prior editions there was often a description of evil as hurting or killing others but no description of combat as evil or a thing that would cause a paladin to fall even though they lost all paladin powers if they took any evil action.

5e though goes out of its way to be vague on alignment and leave it up to individuals in practice, it provides one page on alignment in the PH, page 122, which does not even define good and evil or law and chaos, just a sentence on generalities about the individual nine alignments.

The actual 5e description of good and evil is "Alignment is a combination of two factors: one identifies morality (good, evil, or neutral), and the other describes attitudes toward society and order (lawful, chaotic, or neutral)." which does not pin anything down.

There are only a few one off magic items that directly interact mechanically with alignment and that is only the type written on the sheet.

I think that is a fantastic way to do it. It allows people to take their own views of alignment and morality how they want without putting player and DM into a possible direct conflict over differences in moral judgments. Those who want to use the concepts as roleplay guides can, those who want to ignore it can easily do so.

Inherently evil act has no mechanical impact on the game, taboo in most societies is IMO a more useful narrative description.

This makes the 5e necromancy school one off statement about not a good act and only evil spellcasters doing it frequently stand out as so odd.

 

[payn]

I mostly agree. There are a couple of extreme bad things I consider evil in all circumstances and so inherently evil even when used to do good. I consider torture inherently evil. Narrative circumstances can be twisted to make it appear the best means to stop greater evil (the show 24 worked hard to justify torture) and a lesser evil in some circumstances but I consider actual torture evil in all applications (I don't really consider teasing or consensual exquisite torture types of situations as real torture though).

I think its pretty telling if you have to contort the narrative to make a character sound like the good guy. When you need a series of existential crisis to justify how good they are because they are doing the least evil.

 

[Umbran]

Disagree. I'll stipulate to the fact that it certainly matters to them, but it's not really a question of game design

So, I think it time to ask - what, literally is "the question"? Like, can you write it down?

Because I was responding to the question of, "whether or not they have to have them, or if they just decided to bake those setting assumptions into the rules."

The implied "they" being WotC. And that's the hitch - the answer is dependent on the referent. Whether "they have to have them" is a question of THEIR needs, not your needs, desires, or interests. Sometimes, true answers are not about what you want to hear.

If you want to ask if someone, in general, could produce such - that has already been answered, and example given. The answer to that question is nigh trivial.

Sometimes is seems a lot of folks around here care about that question more than anything else.

We simply recognize that the commercial aspect is pretty central to the production of D&D products. You will not get cogent views of a for-profit company's choices while ignoring the profit element.

 

[Oofta]

One other thing I've been noodling over when it comes to good and evil is the color blue. Now, before you accuse me of adding something special to my morning tea, let me explain. The color blue doesn't objectively exist. A specific wavelength of light that we interpret as blue does exist, but as far as we know we've only distinguished blue as a separate color in modern times. The ancient Greeks for example didn't even have a word for it (1). To this day, some cultures can't distinguish between shades of green and blue, although they can distinguish shades of what we see as green that most people can't (2). For that matter, Russians have different words for dark blue and light blue and can spot the difference much more quickly than most westerners.

So something we think of as an objective thing, a color we see on a regular basis when we look up during the day unless we live in Seattle is only something we have a word for, and only distinguish from other colors because of cultural norms.

So we can confidently say that the color blue doesn't really exist, just like good and evil do not. But if I want to tell you the color of my wife's car I can be confident that when I say it's blue you'll know what I'm talking about. Unless of course you happen to be a member of the Himba tribe. So when we talk about acts that are intrinsically good and evil, people generally know what we're talking about unless you're a philosophy major.

That's useful for the game because it gives us a shared common starting point, one that can be easily ignored if you want.

 

[Voadam]

I think its pretty telling if you have to contort the narrative to make a character sound like the good guy. When you need a series of existential crisis to justify how good they are because they are doing the least evil.

Absolutely. I quickly found 24 morally abhorrent.

This cuts both ways though, contorting narratives to make an action evil in a specific context to demonstrate/imply it is inherently evil is a contortion as well.

Animating a family's dead loved one to psychologically traumatize them would be horrible. That is not really relevant though to whether raising the dead from a 2,000 year old battlefield is evil or whether it would be evil to raise the recently dead in a culture that feels it is a duty for dead bodies to work/protect the community and who would not be disturbed by the practice.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I think that is a fantastic way to do it. It allows people to take their own views of alignment and morality how they want without putting player and DM into a possible direct conflict over differences in moral judgments. Those who want to use the concepts as roleplay guides can, those who want to ignore it can easily do so.

personally (if i've interpreted the meaning of your post correctly) i think that's the root of most if not all of the problems of alignment, giving the labels of G/N/E and L/N/C without giving concrete enough definitions of what makes something good or chaotic or whatever, leaving those labels up to interpretation is what causes so many conflicts in moral judgement.

this is a world where there are gods of good and law and chaos and the rest, and they are tangible energies, what those forces mean do have objective definitions in this game world.

i'm not saying DnD should assign morality to certain actions, anything but that, but they need to set solid iron signposts for the alignments so that people can use them to navigate where on the alignment grid something falls.

don't tell us that a zombie simply is evil, or that the act of creating one is, tell us what defines evil and let us determine things for ourselves from the actions taken, the circumstances and the motivation.

 

[Osgood]

I'm pretty late to this discussion (and apologies in similar points have been raised before), but I have a relevant anecdote.

Some years ago, I decided to run a James Bond style spy campaign set in Eberron (I literally stole plots from old Bond movies, had every adventure start in media res at the tail end of some other adventure, and had villains and femme fatales with ridiculous names!). During session Zero I let the players choose which of the Five Nations' espionage services they would work for… and to my surprise they chose Karnath, who have a deep tradition of necromancy.

Most of the group followed the Blood of Vol--a religion that valued necromancy and regarded undeath as a noble means of avoiding the oblivion of death, the wizard was a necromancer who was not shy about using animate dead.

None of these characters were evil. In keeping with their nation's customs, they would have regarded being animated as zombies or whatever as an honorable way to continue serving their homeland in death. The people of Karnath thought of letting a corpse rot when it could be used to protect the living as wasteful--ideally the willing volunteers of their military, but a fallen enemy would be just as good (and some would say fitting).

Sure, the turn to necromancy, or more specifical Vol, was one the king came to regret and it carried a lot of unsavory baggage (some of which was addressed in the campaign), but it also may have saved the country. The average citizen regards it as a good and patriotic thing. I would say, the good or evil of the act (or spell in this case) is a matter of perspective.

 

[payn]

Absolutely. I quickly found 24 morally abhorrent.

This cuts both ways though, contorting narratives to make an action evil in a specific context to demonstrate/imply it is inherently evil is a contortion as well.

Animating a family's dead loved one to psychologically traumatize them would be horrible. That is not really relevant though to whether raising the dead from a 2,000 year old battlefield is evil or whether it would be evil to raise the recently dead in a culture that feels it is a duty for dead bodies to work/protect the community and who would not be disturbed by the practice.

You keep focusing on perception of folks and morality. In D&D thats only a small part. Raising the dead is dark magic that messes with the cosmic forces. The result is a ravenous creature of ill intent. The result allows folks to cleave them with holy avengers or disintegrate them with disruption morning stars. Its not meant to model the real world.

 

[Vaalingrade]

You keep focusing on perception of folks and morality. In D&D thats only a small part. Raising the dead is dark magic that messes with the cosmic forces. The result is a ravenous creature of ill intent. The result allows folks to cleave them with holy avengers or disintegrate them with disruption morning stars. Its not meant to model the real world.

How is the disruption morning star morally aligned? It's designed to disrupt the animating force, not excoriate the 'dark magic'.

Also, I again ask (and have been asking for 22 years) how a mindless creature has ill intent. If they want them to be evil, you need to abandon the mindlessness.

 

[Voadam]

You keep focusing on perception of folks and morality. In D&D thats only a small part.

I think for the inherent evil discussion it is a fairly large part, alignment is mostly only vaguely gestured at other than entries on character sheets and monster stat blocks. Actual discussions of evil depend on what D&D players bring in as perceptions and morality.

Raising the dead is dark magic that messes with the cosmic forces. The result is a ravenous creature of ill intent. The result allows folks to cleave them with holy avengers or disintegrate them with disruption morning stars. Its not meant to model the real world.

In 5e alignment is fairly irrelevant for all this.

5e Holy avengers do an extra 2d10 radiant damage to all undead, evil skeletons and lawful good ghosts and neutral revenants alike. It is the undead type that is relevant. Detect evil and good detects specific types, not actual good or evil alignments. Take out alignment entirely and these work the exact same way with the same in game effect of holy stuff smiting unnatural creatures.

5e uses a lot of natural language, not descriptors like 4e or 3e did. So even their use of adjectives are open to different interpretations.

What you are mostly left with is individual judgments about dark magic that messes with cosmic forces to create ravenous creatures of ill intent that are bound by their creators commands.

For some the dark magic is enough to say evil, for some the malevolent creature of ill intent is enough, for others neither is.