What makes Undead, Undead? and are all Undead evil?

I know this sounds like a very simple question but I am looking for a more in depth explanation. The common answer is anything once living that is now animated through the use of negative energy. That sounds pretty straight forward... until you look at golems. A Flesh Golem is created through the casting of the 'animate dead' spell just as if it were a Skeleton or a Zombie. However, the Golem entry reads that an earth elemental's spirit is what animates it... negative energy is mostly seen as being evil in nature... which brings me to the problem at hand... which is the more evil act: creating a mindless minion, a skeleton, to do your bidding or stripping an earth elemental of all identify and using it's very life-force to power your creation?

I would hold that anything mindless would be neutral... like animals that do not have the capacity to distinguish our perceptions of morality or ethics. The concept of the Flesh Golem was no doubt inspired from Mary Shelly's Frankenstein... in which the monster sees himself as a monster and only wants to find purpose... read: neutral and needs guidance. What makes an animated skeleton so different?

Just random thoughts to enlighten your day,
Thank you for your time,
Wm. Holder

I've always considered mindless undead to be neutral. The only exception being the flesh/brain eating zombies, but still that's an unusual one. For me negative energy itself isn't evil just merely the impetus of decay and rot given energy form ie, entropy. With flesh golems, they might have the animate undead part, but only to infuse the energy. The earth elemental part helps to act as a control mechanism.

But that's just me.

This question has come up in my home game. We have a character, a young magical prodigy who found a semi-intelligent necromantic spellbook, who is Neutral and doesn't understand why the party is opposed to him animating dead villagers, allies, etc. "But they were helpful when they were living. If I animate them, they can be helpful when dead. Don't you think they'd want to continue helping their friends and family? If I make farmer Bob into a zombie he can hoe his widow's field all night, and his back won't even hurt when he's done!"

We've reasoned that when you animate undead, you somehow prevent the former living person's soul from enjoying a peaceful afterlife. You're essentially ripping the soul from heaven and slaving it to a rotting corpse. For "mindless" undead like skeletons, we say that the soul is aware of the skeleton's actions but is completely helpless. They're a silent witness, totally subjugated by the necromancer/evil cleric.

That's pretty awful/evil.

Compare to Animate Object. In our game, that's essentially telekinesis, with maybe a little of the caster's life force giving some level of autonomy. So casting Animate Undead on a corpse and Animate Object on a corpse have similar results, but totally different "behind the scenes" mechanisms powering the animation.

-z

sirwmholder said:

I know this sounds like a very simple question but I am looking for a more in depth explanation. The common answer is anything once living that is now animated through the use of negative energy. That sounds pretty straight forward... until you look at golems. A Flesh Golem is created through the casting of the 'animate dead' spell just as if it were a Skeleton or a Zombie. However, the Golem entry reads that an earth elemental's spirit is what animates it... negative energy is mostly seen as being evil in nature... which brings me to the problem at hand... which is the more evil act: creating a mindless minion, a skeleton, to do your bidding or stripping an earth elemental of all identify and using it's very life-force to power your creation?

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The morality hit for the binding of the elemental spirit does seem to get hand waived in all editions of D&D. Calling forth evil energy to animate the dead has always been a no-no, though. I view the needing of Animate Dead for a flesh golem is needed as a “user’s manual” for the bound elemental to even move the non earth element “flesh”, unlike Clay, stone and iron which are all undeniably earth element.

Note that creating a flesh golem requires casting a spell with the evil descriptor.

sirwmholder said:

What makes an animated skeleton so different?

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Because once animated into a skeleton, something happens on the mystical level, that the soul of that being can never be raised or reincarnated. Also the Skeleton itself is Evil, unlike a golem, which just might go bonkers.

I've seen it quoted that negative energy is evil, and by RAW I believe that to be correct. There are several citations for this, but usually related to the text of a spell, ability, or an extrapolation. This is also supported by the creation of goodly-positive powered undead called deathless...if undead aren't evil, why make good ones that use the opposite energy?

To me, it's like saying fire is evil because it only destroys things, and doesn't fit easily into my cosmology for energy planes.

I include the negative and positive energy planes as part of my whole concept of the inner planes, and are separate from the outer planes which are all alignment based. Even though each elemental plane or para or quasi elemental plane are their own respective planes, I arrange them into a large globe for ordering with different a x/y/z axis of this globe. My X axis is temperature (fire and ice), my Y axis is density (earth and void), and my Z axis is life (positive and negative). It's all very conceptual, fuzzy, and hard to draw


IMC the energy to power undead or elementals is effectively neutral. It's a matter of what the caster does with the energy, what is his intent, then translate that intent to an alignment. Using it to animate a corpse would be evil, and morbid...you are creating a personal slave. That intent then makes the power animating the undead aligned and therefor subject to effects and energies that are oppositionally (or similarly) aligned.

frankthedm said:

Because once animated into a skeleton, something happens on the mystical level, that the soul of that being can never be raised or reincarnated.

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Technically true, but the use of "never" is a bit questionable.

SRD said:

You can resurrect someone killed by a death effect or someone who has been turned into an undead creature and then destroyed. You cannot resurrect someone who has died of old age. Constructs, elementals, outsiders, and undead creatures can’t be resurrected.

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Anyhow, if you want to ask these sorts of questions, you should also question the premise of "good" and "evil" in DnD. (See the ubiquitous paladin threads about the morality of killing baby trolls, etc.) The bottom line is that there have to be two (or more) teams, and these are easy distinctions for the writers to use. The writers want evil clerics to be creepy and keep rotting corpses at their beck and call, so undead are evil.

sirwmholder said:

What makes an animated skeleton so different?

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I guess the simple answer is: "it's up to you."

Fact is, the game says that animating undead is Evil. It's up to you as a player or DM to come up with the reason why.

So make up your own fluff.

If you don't want Animate Dead to be Evil, that's fine.

-z

I can see why a DM might reasonably houserule such things as neutral and that would not necessarily cause any problems in a universe that is already as bizarre as typical D&D.

However, I strongly believe the RAW is correct to categorize undead as evil by default.

In many, many, many real world traditions/religions doing unnatural & strange things to a body interferes with the spirit's ability to find rest or reach its appropriate destination. Harming the helpless in such a manner is properly presumed to be evil by the definitions in the RAW.

There are other traditions that say otherwise. And I am not against introducing special new spells that have similar effects while not being evil. But the Animate Dead spell in the PHB is listed as evil, as it should be.

Personally, you have to ask yourself why undead are deemed as evil.

Overall, I think it comes down to the simple fact that people don't want to see other people walking around as corpses. The abbhoration and the abomination of such an act is so intense that people call it evil.

If that is indeed the case (and yes, once you start extrapolating, you throw out RAW, but I am at least trying to stick with the spirit of the law) then animating through any means is evil. It is simply the act of them being animated that makes it evil. Has nothing to do with the spirit of the original host, but rather, the undeniable upsetting factor of the situation to begin with.

moritheil said:

Technically true, but the use of "never" is a bit questionable.

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No, Never is quite right; he reffered to Raise Dead and Reincarnate - one of which specifies:
"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." and the other lexically equivalently specifies: "A creature who has been turned into an undead creature or killed by a death effect can’t be raised by this spell".

Ressurection or better can do it, but only after the undead is destroyed.

RAW doesn't specify why Animate Dead and other specifically undead-creating spells are [Evil], but it's clear that it is, and there are hints in other places.

Soul of the deceased trapped in a rotting corpse? Fits, if not in all circumstances (nothing RAW prevents the animation of something who's soul is trapped in a Devourerer, for instance).

Oh, and there is a not-necessarily-evil Core undead - the Ghost has "alignment: any." He's alone in the crowd, though, Core, and he still detects as evil....