D&D 5E Observations on the Monsters in the Starter Set.

[Xodis]

You also forget that dead bodies and skeletons spread disease and plague. Willingly keeping a bottle deadly disease walking around waiting for someone to get too close and get sick is pretty evil in itself.

As far as Speak with the Dead is concerned, I thought that it only worked if the corpse was willing, and it wasn't forced to answer anything it didnt want to? If this is the case then its not invasion of privacy, if not then it could very well be invasion of privacy, unless you tried to deal with the corpse like granting it a last request.

 

[Thaumaturge]

This is basically Karrnath, in Eberron, where you enlist in the army for life... and beyond.

With hints of the Undying Court. I was thinking ancestor worship as I wrote it, anyway.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Olfan]

This was what I was going to add. I think it would be interesting to have a culture that saw being animated as the last thing they could do in this world--they're giving their remains to become laborers and protectors of their family. A society like this would see cremation and burial as evil, because they're wasteful.

But the core assumption of most campaign settings seems to be that remains are viewed as sacred. If remains are sacred, then animating them is evil.

Thaumaturge.

Agreed. Remains are sacred. The other culture you describe would be interesting, but it's not the default.

 

[grimslade]

I always thought the evil in Animating Dead was the tie to the Negative Plane in previous editions. Bringing in Negative Energy, anathema to the prime material, to lend 'unlife' to a corpse was a profane act.
I know there were many subsequent arguments about the chaining of the soul to the undead because of restrictions on Raise Dead with regards to animated corpses, but using anti-life to power the creation is bad. This is why cure spells harm undead.
I think a Necromancer would justify that 'parts are parts', but the 'meat puppet' zombie theory would be an Enchantment or Conjuration, not Necromancy. Necromancy is mastering the primal forces of life and death, not mere puppetry. Creating mindless minions using death energy is bad.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

A set of examples:

Taking a bear corpse, using taxidermy to preserve it, then putting inside some machinery. Not generally considered wrong. (Considered wrong by some, but not by the majority.)

Doing the same with a human corpse. Considered wrong by most cultures. Arguably wrong in the abstract by devaluing / disrespecting a corpse. But, not too far off from experiments on a cadaver. How do we distinguish these cases?

Then:

Taking a human corpse. Using energy from a realm inimical to life to animate it. In almost all cases considered wrong. Perhaps permissible in extremis, say, setting off a necromantic bomb in a base filled with evil necromancers and their minions. But, harrowing to any who go this route, giving them terrible nightmares and fragmented personalities. Arguably wrong in that the knowledge of how to animate the dead almost invariably undermines a soul, leaving a depraved shell.

Then:

Taking a human corpse. Using necromantic energies to animate it, and to bind a once living soul to it, leaving the soul in a living hell as it is twisted in perverse and unspeakable ways. Hard to think of circumstances where the result is not wrong: Even as a punishment, an undead with a bound soul is a creature with unspeakable cravings, yet intelligent and able to set in motion the most evil of plans.

Thx!

TomB

This pretty much sums it up.

A couple of additional considerations:

How does the animation work? Is it merely created as a magical puppet with neutral magical energies? Then we get into the situation of debate about cultural taboos and such. While I would consider it on the bad sad, a reasonable argument can be made for the other interpretation.

But what if the cosmology of D&D itself defines the energy used to animate the dead as, essentially, a profane thing? Something that warps any living creature that comes in contact with it (such as the caster)? Something that actually makes the skeletons and zombies animated via it into inherently evil creatures, imparting traits such as irrational malice and hatred of life? That seems to be what they have been doing since 3.5e.

It seems difficult to me to claim that in the second case it isn't evil (though I'm not sure anyone is making that case).

Personally, I think the second case is a better fantasy scenario than the first case, so I approve of that direction.

Undead also hate life and unless something controlling them tells them not to they will kill any living creature they detect.

My DM has the same understanding. I believe he got it from Ravenloft, but I'm not sure which edition.

 

[tomBitonti]

I think a Necromancer would justify that 'parts are parts', but the 'meat puppet' zombie theory would be an Enchantment or Conjuration, not Necromancy. Necromancy is mastering the primal forces of life and death, not mere puppetry. Creating mindless minions using death energy is bad.

This. Using Animate Object on a dead body, human or otherwise, is different than raising the dead body using Necromancy.

Simply animating a dead body creates a construct, not an undead. Still a desecration, and perhaps a target for an angry spirit, but not the same.

Raising a dead body using Necromancy is a perversion of life. The intent of undead is to harm the living. Only a strong force of will can prevent an undead from causing harm, and only temporarily.

One problem in this space is the treatment of Negative Energy. I've seen presentations which make negative energy a simple mathematical opposition to positive energy, but I don't think it's that simple. Either, negative energy does work by creating more negative energy, or, negative energy is energy, with very bad mojo.

Some folks (myself included) found the Undying Court to be too jarring and don't accept the underlying formulation: Undead animated by positive energy? While I play in an Eberron based campaign, I keep my thoughts away from the Undying Court. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Cybit]

Do any of the monsters have proficiency bonuses to their saving throws?

/asks the 3rd world gamer who won't get his Starter until September

Where are you located? I can grab an extra copy at the store tomorrow and ship it over?

 

[Xodis]

Some folks (myself included) found the Undying Court to be too jarring and don't accept the underlying formulation: Undead animated by positive energy? While I play in an Eberron based campaign, I keep my thoughts away from the Undying Court. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Yeah, I didn't like that too much either. I tried rationalizing with comparing it to the Force, but even still its a hard pill to swallow.

 

[Remathilis]

Yeah, I didn't like that too much either. I tried rationalizing with comparing it to the Force, but even still its a hard pill to swallow.

See, I took at as the next logical step in the idea of ancestor worship/honored dead. Something akin to the Egyptian or Meso-American views of the afterlife where the dead never "die", they just move on to another place of reality. All Eberron does is merge it with the idea of "if the dead in D&D don't really go away, what if they came back?"

Personally, I'd rather see it done as a "petitioner" (from the outer planes concept) than undeath, but when you start thinking about how Egyptians revered the dead, it makes more sense.

(PS: In 1e/2e, mummies were powered by positive energy. So there is prescient).

 

[Xodis]

Personally, I'd rather see it done as a "petitioner" (from the outer planes concept) than undeath, but when you start thinking about how Egyptians revered the dead, it makes more sense.

(PS: In 1e/2e, mummies were powered by positive energy. So there is prescient).

This I could get on board with, just like Space Marines only wake their Dreadnoughts up in great times of need for advice (maybe battle).
I was unaware Mummy's were "positive" Undead or use to be anyways. I think they went the route of the Mummy movies and made it more of a curse now.