Do your PCs have any way to create any of those things (other than spore zombies)? In any edition of the game? Because then we can talk about whether or not those abilities are evil.
However, in this discussion we're currently talking about a Necromancer creating undead using animate dead from the Player's Handbook to create skeletons and zombies exactly as described in the Monster Manual entries... the exceptions are just not relevant. Even in editions that allowed you to create other types of undead, you were still creating explicitly evil undead from the Monster Manual. The tone of the game since Basic D&D and AD&D is that creating undead is not good (or not lawful in the case of Basic).
I also don't see where the Blood of Vol isn't an evil organization. Bone Knights can't be good aligned. Undead Karnnathi are evil aligned. Karnnath itself seems like the result of a successful undead cult that resulted in a Lawful Evil kingdom.
So, yes, exceptions exist. Exceptions that prove the rule. Exceptions that aren't relevant to this discussion because they're not what are being created.
Firstly, I thought the Blood of Vol were the ancestor worshiping Elves from Eberron. I'm not familiar with Bone Knights?
Quick Wiki search
Ah, seems I was talking about the Aerenal Elves and the Undying Court. This is what happens when I do not confirm my sources. Still, I would note that the Eberron wiki page I found does mention that the Undying Court is specifically powered by "positive energy"
But, it seems none of that matters because we can only talk about player abilities. So, let us talk about player abilities. (Continued below)
Who says you use an evil spirit? You can use any spirit, add magic, and then add evil. The very act of creating undead is itself evil and will itself twist the spirit into evil. That's why lots of undead seek out good aligned creatures.
Double foul for not reading the spell or the MM entry. Firstly, Undead do not care if you are good or evil according to the MM. They attack "the living". So, in fact, undead do not seek out good aligned creatures. In fact, as has been mentioned, they do not seek out the living at all. The MM entry puts it very clearly that they are wandering aimlessly until they encounter a living thing, then attack. Of course, none of that really matters, because now we turn to the spell.
The spell states "This spell creates an Undead servant. Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small Humanoid within range. Your spell imbues the target with a foul mimicry of life, raising it as an Undead creature. "
So, where does it say we add Evil into the magic? In fact, it doesn't even give us a real cause to suspect we even use a spirit at all. The spell and the magic are it.
Now, I see you looking at the phrase "foul mimicry of life". To be fair, it does seem to be language to indicate we've done something wrong. But, a poorly performed play could also be called a "foul mimicry of life" so it is hard to use such language to justify "this is evil magic creating a murder machine"
And, the murder machine part is only from the MM. The spell itself is silent on what the undead do when you lose control of them. Instead, it tells you what they do when you give them no orders, which is "If you issue no commands, the creature only defends itself against Hostile creatures. Once given an order, the creature continues to follow it until its task is complete."
Now, this is a problem for the point of "the spell creates monsters exactly like the MM says". Do you know why? Because the MM says you have to command your zombies and skeletons not to attack the living, but in this spell, it specifically says that with no commands, the undead simple stand there and only attack to defend themselves.
So, we don't have evil in the spell. We have good reason to show that uncommanded undead do not attack the living. In fact, there seems to be very little that the MM monsters have in common with the versions created by the spell. Especially considering most Necromancers the party fight also control more than a handful of undead, and they seem to have no problem controlling them, despite the fact that telling the zombies to charge and the skeletons to shoot arrows would take two different bonus actions and the necromancer typically will not use any bonus action to control their undead.
In fact, note that the text of the MM and the statblock make no mention of their requirement to be given a bonus action command from their necromancer. Which, seeing other summoned creatures in other sections of the rules, would be included such as it was for the Artificer's contructs.
So, we have some highly compelling evidence that the spell does not match up with the MM. Which leaves you with a problem, since the spell doesn't do anything you seem to say it does.
Yes, but that's not the part that makes them unassailably evil murder machines. That's in the monster description, which is somewhat beyond the scope of the stat block. Just because another creature or ability might inherit the stat block of a zombie does not mean that it is identical in all ways to a zombie. Stat blocks are a subset of a creature entry, not the whole of it.
But, yes, the stat block does make them evil. That's literally how that works. If the designers had wanted otherwise, they would have specifically added an exception that you should use a different alignment. Wild Shape and polymorph both state that.
No, it's not a problem that there's a player's option that can explicitly create undead in Ravnica. It's not a special case at all. After all, animate dead and necromancers are explicitly listed in the PHB, and they're also explicitly described creating undead as essentially evil unless you've got a really good reason. So evil options already exist in the PHB. Why wouldn't a Golgari druid be evil or evil inclined? The Golgari are black/green. If you're tapping lands for black mana, you are not joining The Avengers.
There are also important differences between Fungal Infestation and animate dead. First, Fungal Infestation grants perfect control. It's never lost. Second, Fungal Infestation creates undead for a limited time: 1 hour, after which it dies. So the Circle of Spores druid can never create an uncontrolled mindless killing machine. Even if the druid dies, so will her creations less than an hour later and they do not act unless directed. However, in the end this doesn't really matter. The creature is still undead and still evil. There's very little reason to think that the PHB's proscription against creating undead wouldn't apply here. On a gradient it's less evil, but that doesn't mean your means are justified.
As far as I understand, black mana is more about death and rot than it is evil. After all, the most common black mana land is a swamp. Swamps are not inherently evil are they? Is rot? Mold? Worms?
And, actually, as pointed out, the alignment stat itself is called out to be mutable in the beginning text of the MM. So, in fact, every single alignment entry could be prefaced with a "usually" in front of it.
Now, I will grant you that the spore zombies are much shorter lived than the ones created by the spell. However, that should not matter for the purposes of our discussion. A zombie created and killed within a minute because it was fighting was still created by the spell. The length of it's existence does not change the alignment issues.
But, if you would like to make mold evil, please explain why the mold is evil. The only person willing to step up to that claimed the mold was evil because it was willing to kill to spread and create more of itself. This of course would apply to every living thing. Cows would be evil for killing grass. Farmers would be evil for killing cows. The entire concept of good and evil would be thrown out.
It's not just the spores acting. The spore and the Fungal Infection ability, whose mechanism is not described. It just says, "your spores gain the ability to infest a corpse and animate it." In the same way that your fireball or your arrow damaging another creature doesn't mean it's the fireball or the arrow that takes the moral responsibility, just because they're your spores doesn't mean it's not you doing it. The spores may just as easily be a conduit for your power rather than being a power unto themselves. Given that their ability to operate is a function of your power, that seems rather plausible.
Ah, you did.
So, it isn't the mold that is evil. The mold is merely a conduit for your power. And your power is evil.
Why?
If I use telekinesis to move a body, is that evil? I simply have put spores in a body, and commanded those spores to move the muscles of the body. This is an application of physics. Where is the evil power here?
By definition, no. That's one of the consequences of tangible good and evil. They become objective reality and therefore objective forces. Moral relativity is as alien and fantastic a concept to the game's multiverse as M.C. Escher's drawings are to our reality. This is one of the problems that D&D's alignment system has, because it can make certain narrative elements impossible or unlikely (e.g., fallen angels).
Of course, because it's all fiction there's nothing stopping the DM from breaking the consequences of this rule. Most tables hand wave that away, but in strictest terms it's an error on the part of the DM's world building for a good deity, unaffected by any outside influence, to do something objectively evil.
Then RAW has made an error, because Good Deities are doing something evil.
Or, that something is not in fact evil, and the RAW did not make an error.
That is exactly incorrect. The first paragraph of Animate Dead explicitly outlines exactly what you can create:
"This spell creates an undead servant. Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid within range. Your spell imbues the target with a foul mimicry of life, raising it as an undead creature. The target becomes a skeleton if you chose bones or a zombie if you chose a corpse (the GM has the creature's game statistics)."
"Skeleton" and "zombie" are not creature types. They're not listed on MM pp7-8. They're named creature entries. You don't get to say, "Oh, I can create anything named zombie." That's not how that works.
Creating a zombie will create a zombie exactly as it exists in the MM. Creating a creature that uses the zombie stat block will create a creature that only uses the just stat block. Those are two different things, and they intentionally use different language. They are described differently by design. Animate dead creates a zombie. Fungal Infection creates a creature that uses the zombie statblock.
Except, they don't work like the spell says they should work.
The necromancer can command some zombies to charge, others to close the door, while a group of skeleton guards create a shield wall and the others fire volleys at the party.
This is impossible to do according to the spell, because it takes a bonus action to give all undead a single order. Yet, I imagine no player would even think to question the necromancer doing so.
The MM says I need to command the undead not to attack the living. The spells says if you give no commands, the undead stands there and only defends itself.
The MM says I need an evil spirit and dark magic. The Spell says nothing about a spirit and can be cast using goodly magic from the gods of light.
The spell and the MM seem to be talking about two separate types of undead. Which makes all the RAW assumptions of the MM moot, because they aren't matching up anyways.
It's not an analogy. It's just a comparison. You'll notice that undead aren't small metal objects buried in the ground, either, for example, but that doesn't make the comparison false. Sharing one characteristic doesn't mean they share all characteristics. They're two things that kill indiscriminately, and that's the end of the comparison. If you want to argue that land mines don't kill indiscriminately you can certainly try, but you should know there's an exceptionally overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary.
The reasoning behind the analogy is that they can be left behind and do harm to those who come across them unaware.
Glyph of Warding does that.
Constructs do that.
Druid Grove spell does that
Lots of things can do that.
Only undead are called out as evil?
If undead are evil because of the land mine analogy, then Stone Golems are evil for the same reason. If one is evil and the other is not, it is not because of the land mine analogy, so the land mine analogy fails.
I do not understand how that seems to be a difficult logical step. If the fact that it can be left behind and be dangerous to anyone running across it makes it evil, then much more than undead are evil. If those things are not evil, then undead are not evil for that reason, and if you want them to remain evil, you need a different reason.
