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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Falling Icicle" data-source="post: 6271575" data-attributes="member: 17077">Our world is the foundation upon which the fantasy worlds of DnD are based. You're also missing my point. I'm simply pointing out that different cultures have different views of right and wrong, proper and improper, sacred and repulsive, etc. That's no less true in DnD than it is here on Earth.Even in DnD, there are many different gods and philosophies and even gods of the same alignments don't always agree about the specifics. There are some common elements, however. Good is about compassion. Good people don't harm others unless they must. They even go out of their way to help others. Evil people act without regard for whether or not it causes other people to suffer. But animating the dead doesn't have anything to with those things. A corpse is no longer alive, and regardless of what anyone does, it's inevitably going to decay and be recycled into the environment in time. A corpse is "worm food" either way. Using bones as a tool is not harming anyone.Now, you can certainly argue that it defies traditions of showing the dead reverence, proper burial, etc. But that would make animating the dead a chaotic act, not an evil one. Traditions and customs are part of the law vs chaos alignment axis, not good vs evil. Look at Robin Hood as an example. He breaks the law and steals, but he does it out of a desire to help others, not out of selfishness. That's why he's chaotic good. By the same token, I think a necromancer who defies burial traditions in order to serve heroic ends is likewise chaotic good. And that's using DnD's own definitions of alignments.Many people on Earth sincerely believe there is an afterlife, and yet are still fearful of death. You could argue that people in a fantasy world where there is magic and clerics and proof of gods' existence that people would be less fearful of death, and in some cases that might be true. But not all. After all, there are many examples of people in fantasy, and DnD in particular, that try to cheat death, whether by becoming immortal, a lich, etc. Whether or not there's an afterlife, people have a natural fear of death.That's beside the point. I was simply pointing out why people often feel naturally afraid of or repulsed by corpses. It was in response to the argument that if something feels disgusting, that's proof that it is "evil." It's not.</blockquote>

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