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<blockquote data-quote="Falling Icicle" data-source="post: 6271148" data-attributes="member: 17077">They've done a good thing by answering the will of the vast majority of players and getting rid of alignment restrictions in classes. They've also done a good thing by changing things such as detect evil and smite. Only only last vestige of alignment restriction nonsense remains, and that's the animate dead spell. I'm making this thread to petition them to remove the &quot;evil&quot; tag from this spell as well.In every single edition of D&amp;D, with the sole exception of 3.5, skeletons and zombies have been neutral, not evil. The only reason they made them &quot;evil&quot; in 3.5 was so that Paladins could smite them. Casting animate dead should not be considered an &quot;evil&quot; act. We're not talking about creating horrible monstrosities by enslaving tormented souls here. We're talking about creating mindless automatons from a corpse. The person's soul has passed on to the afterlife and animating their corpse does not affect their spirit in any way. If anything, I'd say that this is a far more benign act than creating a golem, which involves enslaving an innocent elemental soul. Yet creating golems has never been labeled as &quot;evil.&quot; So why is animate dead? It doesn't harm anyone. It doesn't enslave anyone. Sure, the things it creates can cause harm, but then so can fireball. Sure, zombies sometimes want to eat people, but so do wild animals. Should rangers and druids be &quot;evil&quot; if they have pets that they use for combat?Like any other spell, animate dead can be cast for good and noble reasons. Skeletons can be conjured to defend an otherwise helpless town from invading monsters. Zombie miners can perform dangerous labor so that living people don't have to risk their lives doing such work. As with things like fireball or dominate person, it's how you use it that should determine whether or not it's &quot;evil.&quot; If anything, I'd say dominating someone, stripping them of their free will, is a far more &quot;evil&quot; and abhorrant act than animating the dead. Animating the dead is merely creepy. It doesn't deserve to be officially labeled as &quot;evil&quot; in the core rules.I want to be able to play a heroic necromancer, like the one in Diablo 2. But that's difficult when the game goes out of its way to stigmatize people for using this spell and encouraging the DM to push their alignment toward evil. Many DMs see the &quot;evil&quot; tag and just ban the spell outright for that reason alone. It's time for the last vestige of alignment restrictions to go. Determing the morality of certain spells and actions should be left entirely up to the individual DM and players in question.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Falling Icicle, post: 6271148, member: 17077"] They've done a good thing by answering the will of the vast majority of players and getting rid of alignment restrictions in classes. They've also done a good thing by changing things such as detect evil and smite. Only only last vestige of alignment restriction nonsense remains, and that's the animate dead spell. I'm making this thread to petition them to remove the "evil" tag from this spell as well. In every single edition of D&D, with the sole exception of 3.5, skeletons and zombies have been neutral, not evil. The only reason they made them "evil" in 3.5 was so that Paladins could smite them. Casting animate dead should not be considered an "evil" act. We're not talking about creating horrible monstrosities by enslaving tormented souls here. We're talking about creating mindless automatons from a corpse. The person's soul has passed on to the afterlife and animating their corpse does not affect their spirit in any way. If anything, I'd say that this is a far more benign act than creating a golem, which involves enslaving an innocent elemental soul. Yet creating golems has never been labeled as "evil." So why is animate dead? It doesn't harm anyone. It doesn't enslave anyone. Sure, the things it creates can cause harm, but then so can fireball. Sure, zombies sometimes want to eat people, but so do wild animals. Should rangers and druids be "evil" if they have pets that they use for combat? Like any other spell, animate dead can be cast for good and noble reasons. Skeletons can be conjured to defend an otherwise helpless town from invading monsters. Zombie miners can perform dangerous labor so that living people don't have to risk their lives doing such work. As with things like fireball or dominate person, it's how you use it that should determine whether or not it's "evil." If anything, I'd say dominating someone, stripping them of their free will, is a far more "evil" and abhorrant act than animating the dead. Animating the dead is merely creepy. It doesn't deserve to be officially labeled as "evil" in the core rules. I want to be able to play a heroic necromancer, like the one in Diablo 2. But that's difficult when the game goes out of its way to stigmatize people for using this spell and encouraging the DM to push their alignment toward evil. Many DMs see the "evil" tag and just ban the spell outright for that reason alone. It's time for the last vestige of alignment restrictions to go. Determing the morality of certain spells and actions should be left entirely up to the individual DM and players in question. [/QUOTE]

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