You can do as you want in your campaign of course.
Have you ever considered how the families of those undead might react seeing little Timmy or Auntie Mary animated as undead monsters?
Like.. even just digging up someones deceased loved one and dumping the body on their front doorstep is pretty damn evil. You have zero empathy for how that will make those people feel, or even worse, you actually get a kick out of it.
Now imagine instead of digging up other peoples loved ones and dumping the bodies, you dig them up and animate them with magic.
I dont know about you, but if my dead brother walked in the door, flesh withered on his still recognisable face, a slave to someone elses magic (presuming such magic existed), I would be devastated, horrified and enraged.
What kind of a 'Good' person would contemplate that? What kind of a morally 'neutral' person would contemplate that?
It would be the actions of someone who puts their own interests over others pain and suffering, and either doesnt care if they hurt others, or doesnt realise they are. Likely a complete sociopath.
And most likely thus, evil.
Earlier in the thread I remember someone mentioning that in certain cultures the family goes and unburies dead relatives to bring their corpses to a celebration.
I do know that in Mexico, the Day of the Dead is all about welcoming the spirits of the dead back into the world of the living. Those spirits would be Ghosts, which can be any alignment. Now, I can't find any way to create a ghost with Necromancy (I thought Create Undead did, but it seems not) but it is still an undead and therefore meets all of your other criteria.
And, frankly, the biggest issue here is that the rules in the Player's Handbook are dyslexic when it comes to Necromancy.
The actual class description says:
"The School of Necromancy explores the cosmic forces of life, death, and undeath. As you focus your studies in this tradition, you learn to manipulate the energy that animates all living things. As you progress, you learn to sap the life force from a creature as your magic destroys its body, transforming that vital energy into magical power you can manipulate.
Most people see necromancers as menacing, or even villainous, due to the close association with death. Not all necromancers are evil, but the forces they manipulate are considered taboo by many societies."
And, they specifically give abilities to empower undead and mind control undead (Level 6 and Level 14) indicating that interacting with undead and casting Animate Dead is an assumed option.
Then, all the way in the back, in a section no player would pretty much read, it says:
"
Necromancy spells manipulate the energies of life and death. Such spells can grant an extra reserve of life force, drain the life energy from another creature, create the undead, or even bring the dead back to life.
Creating the undead through the use of necromancy spells such as
animate dead is not a good act, and only evil casters use such spells frequently."
Which honestly, leads to a natural result. Players read the class, read that this is fine and not inherently evil. then people on the Internet or DMs slam them as being evil because of a single line of text in the back of the book that they never read.
And that is ignoring the fact that making Necromancy a blanket evil act is just boring. The Spirits of the Dead are such an interesting resource for storytelling, and there are multiple classes that can pull on that thread, such as the Ancestral Barbarian who summons the ghosts of their ancestors to fight with them. You seem to lose so much more than you would gain but just blanketing "all undead and all creation of undead is Evil."
I get the sense - and hopefully I'm right - that many of you have never experienced up close and personal loss and don't understand the significance of a grave. It's bad enough dealing with the fact that the once cherished, warm and familiar body of your loved one has been subjected to the violation and indignity of an autopsy. So no, treating her like an attack marionette but putting her back after is not ok.
I get it - from 500 feet up it is trivial to animate the corpses of the dead and use them in battle - they are nameless and have no lives or family to care for them - they may even have been your faceless enemies a minute ago. 500 feet up the grave markers and crypts aren't made out of stone out the desire of the bereaved to have a permanent connection to the lost. 500 feet up there are no women and children amongst the orcs and the goblins. 500' up the paladin doesn't have to reconcile his divine conviction with the blatant violation of it happening on round 4. But most of the time I don't want to roleplay at 500' up because then I just get to feeling like I'm playing an overly complex game of Talisman. But that's me - your DM, your table is free to do as it wishes but I'm telling you you're missing out on some of the best the game has to offer. It's ok to be a little uncomfortable sometimes next to your d20.
So if your table is playing beer and pretzels DnD I say bring on the Paladin and have a laugh. If not, don't mix them up with some oddball team-up story because it will lead to irreconcilable conflicts at worst and consume all of the RP oxygen and leave everyone else as a sidekick at best.
Congratulations on being dead wrong. Nearly seven funerals in the last 4 years. Sister's friend committed suicide before that, as well as many deaths at the High School.
Here is the difference. The body is not the person. In fact, the grave isn't the person to me either. I feel no real compulsion to visit my Grandmother's grave. She isn't sitting in the dirt there waiting for me. If I want to speak to her, I speak to her, I don't just ignore her memory because I'm not standing in front of a stone with her name on it.
Would it bother me to see her body brought back and used to kill some random stranger. Yes. But that yes comes from a world and culture where such things are impossible. My Grandmother loved us Grandkids, everything about her life was devoted to the things that made us happy, because there she found joy. I doubt even she would be terribly upset at the chance for her body to be used as a shield and protector for her brand-new Great-Grandson. After all, if the choice was protect the ones you love, even after death, or leave them to their own devices and hope for the best, many people would choose to protect their loved ones. It is our nature.
And DnD magic makes it possible. The dead could be the shield of the living, protecting us, guarding their homes, keeping their countries safe. If these are things people are willing to die for permanently, why would they not be things people would be willing to protect eternally?
Our concept that Death is evil, cruel, merciless, and ugly is a cultural one. Other cultures are different. And that is without different ways for things to work out, in a world where different methods exist, I would expect the cultures to diverge even more wildly.
