D&D General have we had a player race of undead?

[Vaalingrade]

why would the undead have an all-consuming need to kill the living?

The ultimate power in D&D: Lazy Writing.

 

[Voadam]

Undead in D&D have run a gamut on being evil and hating life or not.

Skeletons and zombies in AD&D and 3.0 were neutral. When animated by Animate Dead they could only do as commanded, not even attacking in self defense on their own. In 3.5 they were turned inherently mindless evil. In many editions they are used as common wandering monsters who will attack upon sight. 5e gives them some intelligence.

3e Ghosts were any alignment but as undead they always specifically detected as evil under a detect evil spell even if they were Lawful Good.

There is a long tradition of ghosts who watch over a site or a family and who are portrayed as good and not evil.

In D&D, as mentioned, there have also been the Baelnorn good elven liches, the Spelljammer Archliches who are always good undead, and the Deathless from Eberron who are not inherently evil and powered a little differently from normal undead.

A lot of undead in D&D are presented as evil and hating all life. There are a number who are different though.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I'm all for the shift to treating orcs and goblins as real people and not ethnic stereotypes. I see plenty of room for ghosts and ancestor spirits to be benevolent (or at least non-malevolent) post-death entities. But the undead, at least as defined by official game lore, are up there with demons and mind flayers as inherently hostile to humanoid life. And I'm okay with that.

It fits with their narrative heritage, where the fools who think they can negotiate with vampires or that their loved one's hungry zombie corpse can still be reasoned with are the ones who end up lunch. It fits with their game lore, where the undead are animated by negative energy that's inherently antithetical to life. It fits with their game function, which is to be a clear evil that can be fought directly and without compunction.

Now, it's possible to do something else with the undead. Heck, I played my share of Vampire: the Masquerade back in the 90s. But as I got older I've grown less fond of vampire sob stories about they feel really bad about all the terrible things they do. So if you want to create worlds of selfless necromancers elevating the worthy into deathless immortals that can coexist seamlessly with the living, go right ahead. I'll continue to enjoy my games of Smiting the undead scourge before they murder a village of innocents.

The only difference is that one playstyle is going to continue to get official support and the other isn't. That doesn't have to be a value judgment if you don't want to make it one. Just don't get upset or confused as to why one is getting official support and the other isn't.

mindflayer may be evil but they would be foes regardless they eat us and are parasites meaning they have to kill us in the name of survival
demons are made to be embodiments of the concept of evil thus their being evil is the point.

a zombie has been many things some mindless servants others a plague of death.

you do not need evil for it to fight you just a necromancer telling it to kill you.

it is more that you simply do not need the crutch of them always being evil with the motive kill all life when you could have diverse reasons for them to be opposed to you, some food, some because they told you to, some to make more of themselves some because they are just lashing out.

 

[Kurotowa]

Undead in D&D have run a gamut on being evil and hating life or not.

Skeletons and zombies in AD&D and 3.0 were neutral. When animated by Animate Dead they could only do as commanded, not even attacking in self defense on their own. In 3.5 they were turned inherently mindless evil. In many editions they are used as common wandering monsters who will attack upon sight. 5e gives them some intelligence.

It's complicated, because in older editions while the mindless undead were less innately evil, the act of creating them was more so.

In AD&D 2e the spell Animate Dead had a clause at the end stating "Casting this spell is not a good act, and only evil priests use it frequently." In D&D 3e Animate Dead is tagged a "Necromancy [Evil]" spell, again denoting that using it is an evil act with alignment implications.

So the game has always been clear that undead are bad news. It's just the shift is from a cosmic moral judgment on the creator to a more mortal social censure for creating what's essentially a rabid animal on a loose leash. Which is an interesting shift in its own right, and probably reflects how the importance of alignment and their cosmic moral weight has been lessened over the decades.

 

[Mind of tempest]

It's complicated, because in older editions while the mindless undead were less innately evil, the act of creating them was more so.

In AD&D 2e the spell Animate Dead had a clause at the end stating "Casting this spell is not a good act, and only evil priests use it frequently." In D&D 3e Animate Dead is tagged a "Necromancy [Evil]" spell, again denoting that using it is an evil act with alignment implications.

So the game has always been clear that undead are bad news. It's just the shift is from a cosmic moral judgment on the creator to a more mortal social censure for creating what's essentially a rabid animal on a loose leash. Which is an interesting shift in its own right, and probably reflects how the importance of alignment and their cosmic moral weight has been lessened over the decades.

okay but why was it evil if the creature was not evil?
the second argument was made to justify a position, what is so scary about just stating undead and making them no more intrinsically wrong than any other action the pc do?
you are correct in what the arguments are but there to hide behind not deal with the fundamental out of universe question that matters.
this is not arguing that undead can't be used as antagonists nor that making the undead is a good thing.

 

[Vaalingrade]

the second argument was made to justify a position, what is so scary about just stating undead and making them no more intrinsically wrong than any other action the pc do?

Being wrong on the internet. That's what's so scary.

No joke: I roasted some dude on the WotC forums in an argument over whether casting Animate Dead was evil, pointed out the 3e skels and zombs were mindless Neutral creatures, and proposed a scenario called Sol Sodata that involved a truly benevolent use of Animate Dead to protect a settlement Seven Samurai style.

Turns out that guy was one of the designers.

And then by total coincidence skels and zombs were Neutral Evil (despite still being mindless and the 'mindless creatures are Neutral' rule still being in the MM) replete with the stupid 'go on a murder spree if uncontrolled' that said guy tried to use before I pointed out wasn't in the MM now in the MM.

So basically this is my fault. Or Monte Cook's (who was not the guy I roasted), since he wrote it out in the Second Worst D&D Book Ever Printed, the BoVD shortly before the .5 edition change. So blame him.

 

[Incenjucar]

The world-building thing to do there is to make it easier to create or use undead created with evil spirits that hunger to tear the living apart than it is to use raw negative energy for neutral undead.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Being wrong on the internet. That's what's so scary.

No joke: I roasted some dude on the WotC forums in an argument over whether casting Animate Dead was evil, pointed out the 3e skels and zombs were mindless Neutral creatures, and proposed a scenario called Sol Sodata that involved a truly benevolent use of Animate Dead to protect a settlement Seven Samurai style.

Turns out that guy was one of the designers.

And then by total coincidence skels and zombs were Neutral Evil (despite still being mindless and the 'mindless creatures are Neutral' rule still being in the MM) replete with the stupid 'go on a murder spree if uncontrolled' that said guy tried to use before I pointed out wasn't in the MM now in the MM.

So basically this is my fault. Or Monte Cook's (who was not the guy I roasted), since he wrote it out in the Second Worst D&D Book Ever Printed, the BoVD shortly before the .5 edition change. So blame him.

I think it is more so great fear of what happens if we let the undead not be evil but I fail to see what that great fear is?

The world-building thing to do there is to make it easier to create or use undead created with evil spirits that hunger to tear the living apart than it is to use raw negative energy for neutral undead.

that would be interesting a divide between responsible and irresponsible undead use.

 

[Weiley31]

The ultimate power in D&D: Lazy Writing.

Ah yes, I KNEW the Undead had a good reason to hate the living. This confirms it!

 

[Voadam]

okay but why was it evil if the creature was not evil?

In 3e there were two big aspects.

One all undead creation spells had the [Evil] descriptor which I took to be that it tapped Cosmic Supernatural [Evil] as a force of the universe as part of their magical component, regardless of the morality of the individual use of the spell. Like in the movie Time Bandits. Supernatural evil as just part of undeath, which is separate from moral evil.

This ties into the second 3e aspect, all undead detect as evil under the detect evil spell. This is regardless of their actual individual alignment.

In my own games I house ruled undead as having the full on [Evil] monster subtype which explicitly makes you interact mechanically as evil regardless of your individual alignment.

I think undead being created and powered by supernatural evil works well narratively, even if they can individually be not morally evil.