Skeletons and zombies are evil. Period. No evidence you brought from the rules say the contrary. In fact, you brought zero evidence to prove me or the book wrong.
Hmm, you seemed to have missed some points.
"Skeletons and Zombies taken exactly from the Statblock in the Monster Manual are evil." I actually did provide evidence that those skeletons and zombies might not be the same as the skeletons and zombies created by animate dead.
You can ask me what evidence, but I stated it so many times, you would be better served just going back and rereading my posts. It will be faster than waiting on me to post it all again.
There was no challenge. It can be healed, fully, at almost no cost by not so high level casters. A 7th level spell is nothing to sniff at. A fifth level is usually easily accessible. Unless spell casters of 13+ level are common in world the fifth level spell is way more accessible. A magic nullifying spell cell costs a lot and can be escaped by conventional means. Not the feebleminded condition. It will take a divine caster to reverse the effect.
Okay, you responded to a lot of points here, so let me break these down.
Feeblemind can be cured with a 5th level spell and 100 gp in diamond dust. Amputations can be cured with a 7th level spell (the same spell level as Feeblemind) and no material cost.
Now, you put forth a society utilizing Feeblemind to bring in dangerous criminals and restrain them. Utilizing a 7th level spell in that pursuit. I presented another 7th level spell used in the same pursuit. We are therefore equivalent in terms of spell power.
So, if utilizing Feeblemind is not horrific, because it can be healed, then as I proposed, holding a man down, and sawing off all four of his limbs, cauterizing the wounds, and transporting him back to the city as a limbless torso would not be horrific. Because that can be healed.
In fact, since you are so worried about the cost of resources, this only uses a single spell slot, while your proposed transport requires two.
So, is it your position that both of these actions are morally neutral, because the damage inflicted is not permanent?
On a second point, you mention that 7th level spells are rare "nothing to sniff at" as you put it. While 5th level spells like the Hallow and Private Sanctum are much easier to come by. In fact, for a society to rely upon the 7th level spell, they would have to have researched beyond the point of my jail cell example.
As I mentioned before, you seem to be very concerned with cost. Why is that? Should moral actions be decided by how expensive they are? Should a good person not act in a good aligned manner simply because it costs more money to act that way, as opposed to acting selfishly to retain their wealth?
And finally, you mention that the cell could be escaped by conventional means. I would say you are correct, just like high security prisons in our real world, you could theoretically escape from this prison cell. I would ask you though, should we then put dangerous prisoners in a medically induced coma in the real world, to prevent their escape? Or feed them various drugs that have minor side effects to keep them complacent?
We do not do these things, even if they might lead to a slightly more secure prison, because we consider them wrong and unnecessary. The cell I proposed is more secure than is probably even necessary, becauase we are talking about a wizard being imprisoned. A few mid-level guards and a few dozen checkpoints, and I would say escape is nearly impossible to actually achieve.
And, with the Feeblemind, since you want to consider Greater Restoration as a minor cost to fix the damage done, actually could lead to the prisoner being less secure if they have allies. You would not post a heavy guard in a secure facility for a beast in a cage, which is essentially what feeblemind would turn them into, making it very possible a mid-level cleric could break in and heal their boss the wizard.
But is it ever good to earase a person's mind? Not IRL. Ever. But if it could be reversed as easily as in D&D... There was an episode about in B5 (it was in the 3rd or 4th season with Brad Douriff as the guest star. He played a serial killer that was sentenced to: Death of personality.) A very enlightening episode. You should watch it.
Again, you seem to be fine with committing an atrocity as long as you can heal them later. I disagree with "but we can fix it" being sufficient to change the morality of the action. In DnD you can fix genocide too, that does not change what you did.
I read the synopsis of the episode you mentioned (I am not going to watch an hour long episode for this discussion) and I don't see what sort of point you are trying to make. There seems to be lots of Jesus imagery and discussions of forgiveness, and the plot seems to revolve around someone who had their memories erased being forced to remember what they did and tortured and killed for it, with the big moral moment being the individual who had his mind erased stating that once he knew what he had been responsible for, that he felt he had to own up to his crimes (and a big prayer and God forgives you of your sins moment too). Followed by the person who killed him getting their mind erased and one of the protagonists getting lectured on forgiveness.
So, the government decided that they would execute a man, but leave his body intact. This new individual went through their life, until someone they had previously harmed finds them. They then force this individual to remember horrific crimes, literally crucify them to torture and kill them. Then, that individual is killed, their body left intact, and sent off somewhere else.
What if, instead, the government had decided to just kill the man? Then, he wouldn't have had the trauma of those memories, he wouldn't have been tortured, and the person who committed the crimes against him would have never had the opportunity and would not also have died.
It seems to me, that the path they chose was more cruel and heartless, than simple execution for his crimes. If only by dint of the fact that that path would have led to only a single death, not two.
Slavery is evil. Geas is more like the GPS used to locate a prisoner to ensure of his location. Geas is better in that you ensure that he will respect the intention of the geas. It would not be used lightly. Only in cases where it is possible for the person to evade a zone of truth or similar magic (which can be done relatively easily). Again, a tool that can be used for evil or for good. You see evil, I see security. After all, nothing happens if you follow your conditions. Conditions can be good or evil, again you choose how you use them and act according to your alignment. Again, dear Chaosmancer, you choose to look only at evil geas. Not those that are made for the greater good. You see only what you want to see.
And the same is true of attaching a GPS shock collar to a prisoner. If you follow the instructions you are given, you do not get hurt.
If you disobey, you get fried.
Is it morally good to attach a shock collar to a person, and tell them to give away a thousand dollars to the poor every day for a month, and if they fail to do so, you light them up and send them convulsing in agony to the ground?
The instruction is good, giving to the poor is a good action. Forcing someone to do so under threat of agonizing pain is not good.
And, your example of a "good use" of this spell was simply to ensure that someone wasn't lying to you. You see it as a spell to compel obedience from someone. And I am telling you, that is not what a morally good person would do.
Again, evil is evil. I have nothing more to say. These spells create evil monster. You bring the skeleton to clean your basement. You die of a heart attack in the meanwhile. After the cleaning the skeletons has no instruction. After 24h, control isn't restored and your young 10 year old children comes to the basement to see what is taking you so long and the skeleton happily kills the 10 year old child. Climb the stairs, kills your wife, your daughter and go outside and start killing whomever happens to be in the street until a guard or an adventurer comes to destroy the skeleton. A very good action indeed.
Even if you take the monster manual version of the skeleton, you are wrong. Without encountering a living person, the skeleton merely continues to do what it has always done. So, even if your 10 year old child (love that you made my hermit wizard a family man in a large city to prove your point) goes into the basement and is killed, the skeleton would not climb the stairs. It would continue to clean the basement.
And, let us look at your example from a different angle. Let us say you are an alchemist. Brewing and experimenting with chemicals that are not dangerous if not left to burn for more than 24 hours. You have a heart attack and die mid-experiment. The elixir boils over, explodes, and kills hundreds.
Let us say the potion simply forms a toxic miasma that kills anyone who enters the basement.
Is alchemy evil? Is the potion you were making evil?
Let us say you were opening a portal, die mid spell of a heart attack, and the portal goes wild, opening accidentally to hell and leading to the death of the entire city and enslavement of its people in the depths of Hell.
Is opening or experimenting with portals evil?
And again, a strict reading of the spell from the PHB leads me to conclude there is reasonable evidence that a skeleton with no commands, and not under control, does nothing. It stands in a corner motionless, meaning it would kill no one. Unless it was attacked. That fits perfectly within the RAW of the spell, and yet, would still be deemed evil. Despite the fact that no one could possibly be harmed by it.
This is where I disagree. Poison is the only tool that can be used without the knowledge of the victim. Acid, fire, baseball bat, magic, arrows just about everything else is face value. You can see it coming. Poison will not be noticed. This is the tool of the evil minded persons. On that, I agree fully with the games' authors/creators.
Of course you can get crippled. But at least, you can always defend yourself or another person's life with these. Poison, you can do nothing because you simply do not know. It is insidious, unseen and very efficient. But if for you the end justifies the means...
In that context, they are not poisons any longer but a medicine. And you have to be very careful with the dosage. Even aspirin can kill you if you are not careful enough. Hell Viagra can be deadly, especially with Nitro. Never mix the two together.
So, for you, it is entirely that poison can be sneaky that makes it evil.
But see, this is the problem. Seeing something coming does not mean you can stop it. If I set fire to a house late at night, the occupants might see the flames coming before they die, but that does not mean they can escape.
A 6ft 8in man with a baseball bat who breaks my legs in a parking garage might have been seen, but that doesn't mean I could escape him or defend myself. In fact, against my scrawny self, that man would love to be in a "fair fight" because he is bigger, stronger, and more experienced than me. A "fair fight" is entirely in his favor as he breaks every bone in my body.
That does not make it less terrible or less harmful. Guns can be undetectable to, just ask any sniper. Bombs can be sudden and unexpected.
Poison does not deserve a special place as "evil" just because it is hard to defend against.
