Is Animating Dead Evil?


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hong said:
I'm taking bets on at most 20 replies before someone mentions Hitler.

Anyone?

Why is it that in a thread about Good and Evil, no one ever bets on when someone will mention puppies... *shrug*
 

SableWyvern said:
By the rules: undead are not always evil (check out Ghost), but creating them is.

Beyond that, it's really a matter of what the DM/players decide for their campaign. IOW, pretty much what hong said - although I'm unsure what makes him say that animate dead loses the "evil" descriptor when a wiz/sor uses it.

Well, it's not so much that the spell loses its "evil" descriptor; it's that there are no penalties mandated by the rules for wizards and sorcs casting spells opposed to their alignment. Only clerics are prohibited from doing so, on pain of divine smackdown.

That's penalties _mandated by the rules_, of course. PKitty can always lay whatever smackdown he deems necessary.
 



"Detect Evil" spell

Preface: I'm talking about core rules, here, not PCat's campaign.

Assumption: Anything that creates an evil thing is an evil act.

Assumption: A creature that detects as evil, is evil.

Evidence: The Detect Evil spell detects all undead as evil.

Therefore: All undead, no matter what they personally think, are also evil. This includes supposedly neutral skeletons and zombies.

Conclusion: Creating undead is an evil act.
 

I, personally, see no problem whatsoever with certain undead types being good - liches and ghosts mostly, but why not the occasional vampire? I don't think prolonging your exisitance through undeath is any more inherently evil than prolonging your life through other magic: longevity potions (I know they're not in 3e - yet), wishes or miracles for instance. Of course, the transformation one goes under becoming undead drives most people insane, thereby making them eeeeevil. Besides, aren't all nonintelligent undead neutrally aligned?
As for animating the dead, I can see how that it's not a good act, but in my mind it's perfectly acceptable for most neutrals to animate dead (neutral good being the only one who might have a moral objection to animation). A neutral cleric may not animate the corpses of his dead kin, but what's wrong with animating his enemies?
 


hong said:


Well, it's not so much that the spell loses its "evil" descriptor; it's that there are no penalties mandated by the rules for wizards and sorcs casting spells opposed to their alignment. Only clerics are prohibited from doing so, on pain of divine smackdown.

That's penalties _mandated by the rules_, of course. PKitty can always lay whatever smackdown he deems necessary.

Well... No immediate penalties. Or more precisely, no immediate consequences. The road to aligment shifting is paved with good intentions (Meta-wise) in D&D. Use of spells with opposed alignment descriptors results in the caster's aligment slowly shifting toward their opposed alignment regardless of their actual or claimed intentions for casting said spells.

Of course, in real life, we have no such clear-cut distinctions to guide us. As a test, get a tube of super glue and fasten all of PC's dice to one another while he is out of town. Let us know if you detect any discernible shift in your own alignment. Be sure to have a camera set up to guage his expression and reaction upon the discovery of the effort. Thanks in advance for participating in this experiment. Remember, you are doing this to help us understand alignments better, so it is theoretically a good act... :D
 
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