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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 6272941" data-attributes="member: 7006">Except we're not talking about the spells within the school of necromancy... we're talking about the specific spell Animate Dead (with its 'non-good' descriptor).  I don't think anyone here is advocating putting that tag on every spell within that school.  Just the one that involves the desecration of the dead body for personal purposes.I do think we're all coming at it from the modern perspective in the idea that a dead body is "just meat"... and thus who really cares what you do with it.  After all... in these modern times, we strip our dead for parts to help our fellow human beings all the time, many of us volunteering to do so in life if we are unfortunate enough to die before our time.But I do think the game (and almost all other medieval and fantasy fiction) does look at it from a non-modern perspective, wherein there *is* something sacred about the body after a person dies.  They have rituals to consecrate the body, they bury the body, graverobbing is a capital offense in most of those cultures.  Mucking around with the bodies of the dead just isn't done.Now as D&D 'Adventurers', have we traditionally laughed in the face of those social mores?  Absolutely.  As has been pointed out... looting the body of the creature we just killed, or invading the tomb to steal its riches.  But quite honestly, that's more a fault of us as players and DMs over the last 40 years allowing those actions to become so commonplace that they now appear to be "neutral"... when in truth, they probably could/should/would be looked upon with the same horror that we attribute to people who raise the walking dead.  The fact that we haven't done that (and indeed, "looting" has become the de facto method for acquiring wealth in most games of this type-- roleplaying, tabletop and videogames included) is more of us not really thinking the full implications through of how people of that time would think.  Rifling the pockets of the person we just killed (or jumping up and down or spitting on the body) would probably be considered almost as disgusting.To be honest... I really am in agreement with Dausuul in that I'd like to see in the fluff and description of Animate Dead a bit of explanation of what is happening that warrants the [evil] or [non-good] tag (beyond, as he wisely points out, just the "Animating the dead is not a good act" statement.)  I don't think that is too much to ask.  But I also think it does add to the game to have a spell of this sort maintain a genre consistency to pretty much all stories within this genre that says animating the dead just is socially reprehensible.  Yes... I know and agree that the Dominate spells can be just as evil depending on how they are used, and that Fireballs can cause just as much (if not more) outward destruction... but the fantasy genre has never made hay on their uses for evil purposes.  There's no entire strains of the genre within fiction wherein the stories are all about fireballing people or dominating people.The same cannot be said of Necromancy.  Necromancy is an entire line of the genre in of itself, and in almost all cases... Necromancers are evil.  It's just the way it is.  And while I agree that there is nothing (and should be nothing) to stop a player from houseruling the idea of necromancy being a "good" act for their personal game or campaign... I don't find stripping any or all flavor out of the game (just so players don't have to say they are "houseruling") to be very interesting or compelling either.  Why this idea that having to "house rule" by ignoring one statement in a spell description is such an anathema to people is beyond me.And let's not kid ourselves... why do so many players want to play the "Good Necromancers" in the first place?  It's exactly because Necromancers have always been evil, and thus players want to be unique by being the one character in the story doing the opposite.  "The One Good Necromancer in the land."  Well, in order for that to have any meaning... you need necromancers to be evil, otherwise, being a Good Necromancer ain't no big deal.  They'll become as overwrought and overdone as vampires currently are in popular genre culture.  And do any of us really want that?</blockquote>

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