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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Falling Icicle" data-source="post: 6272675" data-attributes="member: 17077">The game doesn't label necromancy, the entire school, as evil. No edition of the game I'm aware of has ever done that. Only specific spells were designated as being evil. In 5e, the only spell I've seen with any mention of alignments at all is animate dead, and let me tell you, there are some spells in the game that can do some pretty horrible things to people.It's debatable whether or not animate dead affects souls in any way (I don't think it does), but there are spells that unquestionably do. There are spells that trap people's soul so they can neither be brought back to life nor do they get to pass on to whatever afterlife awaits them. Even those kinds of spells have no mention of alignment, even though they have far more sinister implications than animate dead does. Players and DMs are left to determine the morality and consequences of using those spells for their own games, and to roleplay them out. Maybe a good player decides that it's worth doing something as distasteful as imprisoning a soul when it's to ensure that some terrible evil being never threatens the world again. Likewise, a spell that seems entirely benign, like cure wounds, can be used for evil purposes, such as keeping prisoners alive to prolong their torture.I'm not saying that animating the dead isn't creepy, doesn't often go against tradition, won't often spark outrage from certain NPCs, etc. Regardless of whether or not the game rules say anything about alignment in the spell, a player who uses such magic is doing something that many people are opposed to and must tread carefully. Any necromancer foolish enough to blatantly go dig up the local graveyard, animating the corpses of a town's loved ones is likely to get run out of town by pitchfork-wielding mobs. Any necromancer that creates flesh-eating zombies and then carelessly lets them loose to eat people is going to have the consequences for his callous disregard catch up with him eventually.My argument basically is this, spells don't need to say anything about morality or alignment because that's something people should roleplay out and decide for themselves. IMO, that's part of the fun. That's part of roleplaying. We don't need the rules to come out and tell us that using fireball to kill innocent villagers is evil. We don't need the rules to come out and tell us that abusing spells like charm and dominate to take advantage of people is not a very nice thing to do. And the game rules don't come out and say those things. They don't need to. Yet of all the spells in the game that can do incredibly vile and destructive things, I'm surprised that the game designers chose animate dead alone out of all of them to insert an alignment clause in the spell's description. If spells like dominate and soul bind don't need such a clause, I don't think animate dead does either.</blockquote>

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