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.)

 

[Tonguez]

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.

5e has abandoned mindlessness, 5e zombies have Int 3 Wis 6, sure its beast-like intelligence but its still there (compare to 3e where zombies had no intelligence score at all)

 

[Tonguez]

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.

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.

It seems strange that you argue that in DnD as written the Holy Avenger affects all undead regardless of alignment but cant accept that in DnD as written the creation of undead is an evil act - thats also not an explicit alignment issue, a good PC creating undead is doing an evil act according to DnD. The rules as written make the evil objective even if alignment doesnt exist for anything else

 

[Voadam]

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.

5e does not have fully mindless creatures, most automaton-like things have at least a 1 int and charisma.

Skeletons are explicitly not mindless. "Although they lack the intellect they possessed in life, skeletons aren't mindless."

"When skeletons encounter living creatures, the necromantic energy that drives them compels them to kill unless they are commanded by their masters to refrain from doing so. They attack without mercy and fight until destroyed, for skeletons possess little sense of self and even less sense of self-preservation."

Zombies in the MM are the closest, they are narratively described as mindless soldiers but that section also says "A zombie can follow simple orders and distinguish friends from foes, but its ability to reason is limited to shambling in whatever direction it is pointed, pummeling any enemy in its path."

There is also the description "A zombie retains no vestiges of its former self, its mind devoid of thought and imagination. A zombie left without orders simply stands in place and rots unless something comes along that it can kill. The magic animating a zombie imbues it with evil, so left without purpose, it attacks any living creature it encounters."

For many casual conceptions of evil attacking living things just because would be considered enough to consider them evil and call them evil.

For some it is not evil because they have no choice to do otherwise, it is the dark magic driving them and giving them no choice so they cannot be morally held accountable even though the book calls them evil and gives them an int score.

 

[MGibster]

Good is good and evil is evil. Evil can't become good. Philosophy is fine as an academic exercise, but when you(general you) are trying to justify evil acts, that's a problem.

I remember my first philosophy course I took as an undergraduate and the instructor started out saying, "Philosophy isn't a bunch of 'we know nothing' baloney. It's supposed to be useful, meaning you can apply it to real life situations." Philosophy isn't just an academic exercise, it has ramifications in the real world.

 

[Voadam]

It seems strange that you argue that in DnD as written the Holy Avenger affects all undead regardless of alignment but cant accept that in DnD as written the creation of undead is an evil act - thats also not an explicit alignment issue, a good PC creating undead is doing an evil act according to DnD. The rules as written make the evil objective even if alignment doesnt exist for anything else

Because I do not read 5e as saying the act of undead creation is objectively evil, the closest it says is not a good act and only evil spellcasters do it frequently. The rest is inference and judgment calls. A lot of which I do not find persuasive.

In 3e there was the evil descriptor for undead creation spells so I was fine for saying for purposes of 3e alignment interactions it was mechanically an evil act regardless of the moral situation. I was fine with having that be a thing in 3e that caused a paladin to fall.

Descriptors of cosmic evil forces as analogous to ritual purity concepts that mechanically impacts and interacts in different ways with forces of comic good is pretty cool and was fairly defined in 3e and separate from moral judgments about the moral goodness or evilness of an action or creature. 5e, for the most part, does not do that mechanical cosmic forces thing.

 

[James Gasik]

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.

So back in 3rd edition, they made the mistake of trying to define what sorts of actions were aligned. And it quickly became rather ridiculous- not only is it subject to interpretation, but as this thread proves, any attempt by WotC to define "what is good or evil or simply neutral" is going to raise someone's hackles.

And that's before we get into the utter nonsense of the Book of Vile Darkness/Exalted Deeds (poisons and diseases that only effect evil people so they're ok! Mind control spells that force an evil creature to become good!).

 

[nevin]

actually it worked pretty well up through the book of Vile Darkness and the Book of Exhalted deeds. People knew what was bad and what was good for thier clerics and paladin's and anyone else that needed that guideline in the game. The mistake was allowing every person with a difference of opinion to chime in and insert thier own view of morals and then it turned into a muddy mess.

 

[Voadam]

actually it worked pretty well up through the book of Vile Darkness and the Book of Exhalted deeds. People knew what was bad and what was good for thier clerics and paladin's and anyone else that needed that guideline in the game. The mistake was allowing every person with a difference of opinion to chime in and insert thier own view of morals and then it turned into a muddy mess.

I disagree,

The alignment disagreement issues have been there since 1e with paladins falling for single evil actions and level loss and xp penalties for switching alignments up through 3e with alignment requirements for classes and fallen paladin rules. All the way until 4e took out mechanical issues for alignment and then it became a mostly academic argument without a big impact on the game and PCs.

Alignment has always been vague and hard to pin down on specifics with contradictory and conflicting stuff going on in descriptions and the potential for people to view things differently. 1e-3e had mechanical setups though for DMs to police the morality of PC roleplay and impose mechanical consequences for characters as opposed to game reactions of NPCs to PC actions.

 

[James Gasik]

actually it worked pretty well up through the book of Vile Darkness and the Book of Exhalted deeds. People knew what was bad and what was good for thier clerics and paladin's and anyone else that needed that guideline in the game. The mistake was allowing every person with a difference of opinion to chime in and insert thier own view of morals and then it turned into a muddy mess.

I can't find it now, but there was this little booklet that came with one of the DM screens, I believe it was, that had a list of actions (I think it was to help players figure out what alignment their characters should be) that had some pretty ludicrous examples.

 

[nevin]

I

I disagree,

The alignment disagreement issues have been there since 1e with paladins falling for single evil actions and level loss and xp penalties for switching alignments up through 3e with alignment requirements for classes and fallen paladin rules. All the way until 4e took out mechanical issues for alignment and then it became a mostly academic argument without a big impact on the game and PCs.

Alignment has always been vague and hard to pin down on specifics with contradictory and conflicting stuff going on in descriptions and the potential for people to view things differently. 1e-3e had mechanical setups though for DMs to police the morality of PC roleplay and impose mechanical consequences for characters as opposed to game reactions of NPCs to PC actions.

I disagree. paladins knew in 1e what was going to happen. Most DM's I played with were pretty clear. Most would even do warnings. (there are always bad DM's so don't throw them at me. I'll ignore that argument because they affect everything). Paladins and clerics losing thier abilities was a baked into the thing game that most accepted and the ones that didn't generally only played one or two characters of those classes then moved on. If you didn't like the morality argument, you had Wizards, assassins, rogues and fighters. you can't have a game where a human being runs the game and not have conflicts on what morality or anything else means. Look at this thread. We've beaten the horse down to a plowed field ready to plant.